Latest news from Fallen Enchantresshttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/
The latest news posted on Fallen EnchantressMon, 21 Jan 2019 23:01:08 +0000en-usProject Spotlight: Fallout 4: New VegasThis week we're talking to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/1663911]Metamoth (aka metalmouth7)[/url], the Project Manager for what is, perhaps, the most dedicated group of Fallout New Vegas fans out there. Fallout 4: New Vegas is a total conversion mod for Fallout 4, painstakingly recreating the game's assets and mechanics from the ground up.
<br /><br />[center][youtube]997PAfxFiGE[/youtube][/center]
<br /><br />[b]Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about your project, first off can you tell us a little about yourself and the key members of your mod team.
<br />[/b]
<br />I'm Meta, the Project Lead on F4NV. I've been with the team since its formation in August of 2017. I've been modding in one way or another for about a decade, on titles ranging from Battlefield 2 and Command and Conquer: Red Alert to Homeworld 2. I first started working with Skyrim about 3-4 years ago, and Fallout 4 not long after it released, however F4NV is the first project I've been involved with of this sort.
<br /><br /><br />[b]For anyone who isn’t aware of your project yet, what is Fallout 4 New Vegas?
<br />[/b]
<br />Fallout 4: New Vegas is a community-run project aiming to remake Fallout: New Vegas in the newer Fallout 4 Creation Engine, taking advantage of some of the features of the newer engine to make for a better and more refined gameplay experience.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Fallout New Vegas is considered by many to be the best Fallout game. How faithful are you planning to stay to the original?
<br />[/b]
<br />We're remaking all of the quests as they were in New Vegas, alongside all of the original features, with tweaks made where possible to take advantage of the features of the newer engine, as well as to bring back some of the cut content and expand on the game world where possible. Narrative-wise, nothing will be changing in Fallout 4: New Vegas.
<br /><br />[center][url=https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547119779-1848870152.png][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547119779-1848870152.png[/img][/url] [url=https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547119786-1864871593.png][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547119786-1864871593.png[/img][/url][/center]
<br /><br /><br />[b]What are you adding that is new and improved?
<br />[/b]
<br />We're adding a number of new things to F4NV. We're aiming to expand upon the weapon mod system first seen in New Vegas with the added functionality of the Fallout 4 weapon modding systems. We're also tweaking and rebalancing the combat of New Vegas to better fit into the more dynamic combat of Fallout 4 while retaining the more RPG-based systems utilized in New Vegas to create a more dynamic and interesting combat system. We're also looking at some of the cut content found in Fallout: New Vegas and reimplementing some of it, alongside some new content in the form of new weapons and some smaller environmental encounters to address some of the issues the original game had in regards to many finding the worldspace in Fallout: New Vegas being somewhat barren and some exploration feeling unrewarding, while maintaining the tone and feel of the world. Our core philosophy when it comes to adding any of this content is to ensure that it feels like it was always present in Fallout: New Vegas.
<br /><br /><br />[b]How did the project get started?
<br />[/b]
<br />The current F4NV project started off after an earlier attempt at the same goal that kicked off in late 2016. After that project came to a close in July of 2017 due to a number of issues going on internally, we picked up where that team left off and began working towards the same goals.
<br /><br />[center][url=https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547123235-357119465.png][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547123235-357119465.png[/img][/url] [url=https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547123224-1184291113.png][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547123224-1184291113.png[/img][/url][/center]
<br /><br />[b]Could you tell us about your workflow?
<br />[/b]
<br />Because of the size of our team and the scope of our goals, our project has a number of different sub-teams working at different speeds towards goals that support the needs of each team. To keep this in check, almost every sub-team operates within fairly strict milestone goals based upon gradual outwards expansion. This allows us to focus on more specific goals as a whole, with each subteam being able to work as quickly or as slowly as they need to so that they can meet their objectives, and means that teams that end up completing their goals faster than others are able to continue to focus on further milestones as the project moves forward.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Building a mod collaboratively like this can be challenging. What advice would you give to modders looking to start projects like this together?
<br />[/b]
<br />There are two main considerations that are key to building a project like this. Firstly, you should always understand that failure is an option. Instead of fearing that, however, you should instead simply accept it, and work to mitigate the damage it'll do to your project. This tends to have a positive knock-on impact on planning and helps to keep a project viable, while also typically meaning that you're likely to end up completing work that can be released to the larger community if something does go wrong. This can often mean that the hard work of your team members will not go to waste, and often leaves your team members feeling a lot more happy with the work they're doing on your project. Secondly, while it can seem a bit obvious, planning for a reasonable scope is also very important. A project like this will be slow-going no matter what - that's simply the nature of modding. However, if you plan for the team you have, instead of the team you want, you'll often be a lot more able to meet your goals, and this will give your project a far better chance of success as time goes by and work is done on your project.
<br /><br />[center][url=https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547132896-2061979573.png][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547132896-2061979573.png[/img][/url] [url=https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547132897-1093844225.png][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547132897-1093844225.png[/img][/url][/center]
<br /><br />[b]Are there any technical accomplishments you’re particularly proud of from creating the project?
<br />[/b]
<br />One of the biggest things for Fallout 4: New Vegas is having all of the legacy systems for Fallout: New Vegas functional in the Creation Engine. Many of these things, such as skills, damage threshold, or the weapon condition system are a huge part of the gameplay loop in Fallout: New Vegas, and without them, F4NV would feel more like a pale imitation of the original. We've managed to recreate nearly all of the original systems, and this is a huge contribution to F4NV feeling like New Vegas.
<br /><br /><br />[b]For anyone who wants to join the team or support your project, what’s the best way to do that?
<br />[/b]
<br />The best way to apply to Team F4NV is to use the [url=http://f4nv.com/apply.html]application form on our official website[/url]﻿.
<br /><br />[line]
<br />A big thank you to Metamoth from the Fallout 4: New Vegas team for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597][b]BigBizkit[/b][/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975][b]Pickysaurus[/b][/url]. This week we're talking to Metamoth (aka metalmouth7), the Project Manager for what is, perhaps, the most dedicated group of Fallout New Vegas fans out there. Fallout 4: New Vegas is a total conversion mod for Fallout 4, painstakingly recreating the game's assets and mechanics from the ground up.
997PAfxFiGE
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about your project, first off can you tell us a little about yourself and the key members of your mod team.
I'm Meta, the Project Lead on F4NV. I've been with the team since its formation in August of 2017. I've been modding in one way or another for about a decade, on titles ranging from Battlefield 2 and Command and Conquer: Red Alert to Homeworld 2. I first started working with Skyrim about 3-4 years ago, and Fallout 4 not long after it released, however F4NV is the first project I've been involved with of this sort.
For anyone who isn’t aware of your project yet, what is Fallout 4 New Vegas?
Fallout 4: New Vegas is a community-run project aiming to remake Fallout: New Vegas in the newer Fallout 4 Creation Engine, taking advantage of some of the features of the newer engine to make for a better and more refined gameplay experience.
Fallout New Vegas is considered by many to be the best Fallout game. How faithful are you planning to stay to the original?
We're remaking all of the quests as they were in New Vegas, alongside all of the original features, with tweaks made where possible to take advantage of the features of the newer engine, as well as to bring back some of the cut content and expand on the game world where possible. Narrative-wise, nothing will be changing in Fallout 4: New Vegas.
What are you adding that is new and improved?
We're adding a number of new things to F4NV. We're aiming to expand upon the weapon mod system first seen in New Vegas with the added functionality of the Fallout 4 weapon modding systems. We're also tweaking and rebalancing the combat of New Vegas to better fit into the more dynamic combat of Fallout 4 while retaining the more RPG-based systems utilized in New Vegas to create a more dynamic and interesting combat system. We're also looking at some of the cut content found in Fallout: New Vegas and reimplementing some of it, alongside some new content in the form of new weapons and some smaller environmental encounters to address some of the issues the original game had in regards to many finding the worldspace in Fallout: New Vegas being somewhat barren and some exploration feeling unrewarding, while maintaining the tone and feel of the world. Our core philosophy when it comes to adding any of this content is to ensure that it feels like it was always present in Fallout: New Vegas.
How did the project get started?
The current F4NV project started off after an earlier attempt at the same goal that kicked off in late 2016. After that project came to a close in July of 2017 due to a number of issues going on internally, we picked up where that team left off and began working towards the same goals.
Could you tell us about your workflow?
Because of the size of our team and the scope of our goals, our project has a number of different sub-teams working at different speeds towards goals that support the needs of each team. To keep this in check, almost every sub-team operates within fairly strict milestone goals based upon gradual outwards expansion. This allows us to focus on more specific goals as a whole, with each subteam being able to work as quickly or as slowly as they need to so that they can meet their objectives, and means that teams that end up completing their goals faster than others are able to continue to focus on further milestones as the project moves forward.
Building a mod collaboratively like this can be challenging. What advice would you give to modders looking to start projects like this together?
There are two main considerations that are key to building a project like this. Firstly, you should always understand that failure is an option. Instead of fearing that, however, you should instead simply accept it, and work to mitigate the damage it'll do to your project. This tends to have a positive knock-on impact on planning and helps to keep a project viable, while also typically meaning that you're likely to end up completing work that can be released to the larger community if something does go wrong. This can often mean that the hard work of your team members will not go to waste, and often leaves your team members feeling a lot more happy with the work they're doing on your project. Secondly, while it can seem a bit obvious, planning for a reasonable scope is also very important. A project like this will be slow-going no matter what - that's simply the nature of modding. However, if you plan for the team you have, instead of the team you want, you'll often be a lot more able to meet your goals, and this will give your project a far better chance of success as time goes by and work is done on your project.
Are there any technical accomplishments you’re particularly proud of from creating the project?
One of the biggest things for Fallout 4: New Vegas is having all of the legacy systems for Fallout: New Vegas functional in the Creation Engine. Many of these things, such as skills, damage threshold, or the weapon condition system are a huge part of the gameplay loop in Fallout: New Vegas, and without them, F4NV would feel more like a pale imitation of the original. We've managed to recreate nearly all of the original systems, and this is a huge contribution to F4NV feeling like New Vegas.
For anyone who wants to join the team or support your project, what’s the best way to do that?
The best way to apply to Team F4NV is to use the application form on our official website﻿.
A big thank you to Metamoth from the Fallout 4: New Vegas team for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to BigBizkit or Pickysaurus. Fri, 18 Jan 2019 13:11:23 +0000InterviewsPickysaurushttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13916
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/1391649For the records - ElminsterAUFor our Mod Author feature this week, we’re talking to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/167469]ElminsterAU[/url] best known for one of the essential tools for modding Creation Engine games. The xEdit application has become a staple in the toolkits of modders and mod authors from Oblivion to Fallout 76.
<br /><br />[line]
<br />[i][b]Author's Note:[/b] This article was updated at the request of ElminsterAU to add additional users to the team section. (11/01/2019 23:15 GMT)[/i]
<br />[line]
<br /><br />[b]For those in our community who want to know a little about the man behind the ElminsterAU handle, could you tell us a little about yourself?
<br />[/b]
<br />I grew up in mid-west Germany, along the Rhine valley, in the '80s and early '90s, moved to Australia a bit over 16 years ago, and am now living in south-east Queensland, north of Brisbane, with my wife and our 6-year-old twins. I got my first computer (an Atari 520ST) when I was about 8 and was instantly fascinated with it. Not just playing games, but also figuring out how to make the computer do things I wanted it to do. I taught myself programming using Omikron-Basic by looking at the examples. Still have fond memories of that time.
<br /><br />A year later we got a "family PC" (a 286 at first, a bit later a 386) which I was using on and off, but the Atari was my mainstay for quite a few more years. I dabbled with GW-BASIC on the PC but found it lacking, and so, shortly after Turbo Pascal 4.0 came out, I started learning Pascal by looking at examples and a pocket-sized "Turbo Pascal 4.0 - The Reference" book. I've learned plenty of other programming languages over the years after that (Everything from Assembler to Smalltalk, and more recently Java, C# and many more), but Pascal (now in the form of Delphi) has been my language of choice ever since.
<br /><br />When I was 15, while still finishing school, I started my own registered trade (which required getting special permission from a family court as a minor), building custom PCs and doing custom development work for a number of customers.
<br /><br />﻿[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547222670-738211894.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />After 10 years of school ("Realschule" in Germany), I started an industry apprenticeship as "[url=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommunikationselektroniker]Kommunikationselektroniker Fachrichtung Informationstechnik[/url]" (“Communication engineer specialized in information technology”) and finished it 1 year early with a top grade.
<br /><br />I was still doing custom development work during all that time and directly started full-time work for one of my major customers, [url=https://www.microtech.de/]Microtech [/url]where I quickly went from "new guy" to "in charge of designing and developing the application framework for our next generation software". After 4 eventful years at Microtech, during which time I also provided a completely new design for FlashFiler (the database engine I was using at Microtech) to TurboPower (the make for FlashFiler) for them to implement, I moved to Australia and was supported to start working on [url=http://www.realbusinesssoftware.com.au/rbscosmos.html ]COSMOS [/url]which was using the new release of FlashFiler that was based on my design.
<br /><br />Shortly after I arrived in Australia, TurboPower unexpectedly got bought and exited the Delphi component market (the buyer just wanted the developers for their in-house projects), leaving a lot of FlashFiler users without any real way forward. So instead of working on COSMOS as planned, over the next 8 months, I developed a new database engine from scratch, [url=https://www.nexusdb.com/]NexusDB[/url], which I've been working on, maintaining and improving, for the last 16 years.
<br /><br />Outside of computers, I've been an avid table-top RPG player and DM since my childhood, starting with 2nd edition DSA (Das Schwarze Auge, The Dark Eye, a German RPG) and later AD&amp;D2 and following editions.AD&amp;D got me started on reading fantasy novels. I have very fond memories of trying to read the original Dragonlance trilogy in English for the first time. This started me down the road as a ravenous reader of fantasy and science fictions books that continues until today.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Can you remember how you first got into gaming?
<br />[/b]
<br />My earliest memories of "gaming" are of visiting a schoolmate and playing a whole bunch of games on his C64. The only title that has stuck in my mind from then is Giana Sisters, but there were many more.
<br /><br />When I got the Atari, I initially only had the high-resolution monochrome display for it, which means I couldn't play any of the commercial games on it. I have fond memories of my Dad driving me to the next larger city on weekends to visit a shop that had various freeware and shareware games and you could buy floppy disks with them for a small copy fee. One of my favourite games of these early days (I was 8 at the time) was [url=https://www.eckhardkruse.net/atari_st/baller.html]Ballerburg[/url].
<br /><br />When I finally got a colour monitor connected to the Atari my first game was [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_(video_game)]Dungeon Master[/url] which cemented my love of RPGs. I also fondly remember spending countless hours with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airball_(video_game)]Airball[/url]. There are way too many games to remember them all by now.I've long lost count of the number of games I've played over the years. I've dabbled in pretty much any genre, but overall found the most enjoyment in role-playing, tactical, and strategy games. Ultima 7 is still very much on my mind as the first computer RPG where I really felt that the world is “alive”.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Do you still find the time to play any games?
<br />[/b]
<br />I try to take the time to play, but it has gotten much rarer than I like. I try out a pretty decent number of games every year, but hardly find the time to actually finish them. It's one of the reasons why I enjoy working on xEdit so much, as it keeps me closer to my gaming roots.
<br /><br /><br />[b]For someone who is just dipping their toe into the modding scene and has never heard of xEdit, what does it do and why would they need it, how would you explain it?
<br />[/b]
<br />I'll be explaining some of the history of xEdit as well, so please excuse me for maybe being a bit long-winded.
<br /><br />When I started playing Oblivion, it was the first time I came in contact with a game that had such an extensive modding scene. I downloaded a whole bunch of mods (mainly from tessource.net which has become NexusMods nowadays), threw them all together semi-randomly and tried to play... to find that many things were suddenly broken and didn't work right. Looking around, I found that there weren't really any tools available to help me understand why that is.
<br /><br />Not having yet encountered a computer-related problem that I couldn't solve by throwing a custom program at it, I started working on TES4View, which today has grown into xEdit.But its roots are in "conflict detection". Loading your complete setup of mods in the same way that the game does, and providing direct visual information about how the different modules conflict and interact with each other. Everyone who uses any mods in a game that xEdit supports should be using xEdit to look for conflicts in their setup, to make informed decisions about load order and necessary patches. There is really no alternative to this. Things like LOOT or information from the author on the mod pages can give you some general information, but at the end of the day, every modded setup is pretty much unique, and it is up to the user to understand how their installed mods interact with each other and to make sure any conflicts are correctly resolved. There are no shortcuts for this. Mods are not “DLC from a third party”. Making them work together will require a certain level of willingness and dedication to learning how they work and interact with each other.
<br /><br />After I initially developed TES4View, I found out that a large number of conflicts between mods were caused by what I then termed "Identical to Master" or ITM records. Basically, every mod available at that time contained anywhere between some and countless records that had nothing to do with the function of the mod and which were identical to the same record in the official game master. By removing these unnecessary records, many mods that were incompatible before could then be used together. As it proved difficult to actually remove these records using the Construction Set (the official editor for Oblivion, which was later called GECK for FO3/FNV, and is called CK (= Creation Kit) for TES5/SSE and FO4), I then started expanding TES4View, which could only be used to view module files, into TES4Edit, to allow directly modifying module files to fix problems.
<br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547219250-1652958956.jpeg[/img] [img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547219257-2057031459.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />This brings us to the 2nd major use of xEdit, the process that is now termed "cleaning". The goal of which is to find and remove unnecessary records from a mod to decrease the chance that it conflicts with other mods. This is a process that normally should be done by the mod author before the release of the mod.
<br /><br />Unfortunately, not all mod authors do this, and newer versions of xEdit might get better at detecting ITMs, which, if the mod author doesn't update their mod anymore, means that mod users might want to perform this operation [b]if[/b] conflict detection shows that ITMs are causing unnecessary conflicts.
<br /><br />This is not a process that should be done ritually or habitually for every mod. It is no longer the early days of Oblivion modding when there were no tools for it and mod authors weren't aware of it, so every uploaded mod required cleaning. Nowadays, mod users should generally only perform it for mods that conflict detection has shown are causing unnecessary conflicts because of ITMs.TES4Edit quickly grow from just being able to remove ITMs to being able to fully edit all data in existing modules and even creating new modules from scratch.
<br /><br />The initial purpose of this was "conflict resolution" by creating patches, new modules that contained only conflicting records from two other mods, with their contents merged such that both original mods can work together. This is still one of the cornerstones of xEdit functionality for mod users today. While there may be pre-built patches for certain mod combinations available, almost every modded setup is unique, and there is a high chance that it contains combinations of conflicting mods for which no pre-build patches are available. Being able to create your own patches, based on the results of conflict detection, is an important skill that any mod user should have in their toolbox. Finally, once TES4Edit could reliably edit all information in module files, it became possible to "create new mods" from scratch, or make extensive changes to existing mods, using only TES4Edit. This really just builds on the skills developed for creating patches. Many mods on NexusMods today have been completely created in xEdit.Later I used TES4Edit as the basis for creating TES4LODGen, which was the first tool for Oblivion that could generate Tree/Object LOD information for your complete load order.
<br /><br /><br />[b]The software has been maintained by a team of people over its lifetime, could you tell us who the key developers are and how they contribute to the project?
<br />[/b]
<br />The software that is xEdit today was initially closed source and I was the only developer working on it during the Oblivion, Fallout 3, and early Fallout New Vegas timeframe. If I remember correctly that should be everything up to Version 3.0.19.
<br /><br />After that, when it became clear to me that, because of work commitments and the birth of our twins, I would not have time to adequately maintain xEdit, I decided to open source the program.
<br /><br />Thankfully a group of dedicated people took the job while I went on hiatus, foremost Hlp, Zilav, Sharlikran.
<br /><br /><br />[list]
<br />[*][url=http://www.nexusmods.com/users/4147439/?]Sharlikran[/url]﻿ took over a lot of the organizational work and has been working on decoding record definitions.
<br />[*][url=http://www.nexusmods.com/users/156622/?]Zilav[/url]﻿ added the scripting engine and localization support that was necessary to support Skyrim.
<br />[*][url=http://www.nexusmods.com/users/1102380/?]Hlp[/url]﻿ did a large amount of work to enable save game viewing (which still a work in progress).
<br />[*][url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/513981]fireundubh[/url] contributed greatly to the Fallout 4 record definitions, hardcoded records, and various other additions and fixes.
<br />[*][url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/14649434]Jonathan Ostrus[/url] made significant contributions to the Fallout 76 record definitions.
<br />[*]There are various other minor contributors that can be found [url=https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit/graphs/contributors]on GitHub[/url]
<br />[/list]
<br />All of them have been instrumental in creating the record definitions for Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Skyrim Special Edition.
<br /><br />[url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/3155782]Sheson[/url] joined the project to improve LOD generation in xLODGen and work on DynDOLOD (the program part of which is a fork of xEdit with additional functionality). He has also been instrumental in updating xEdit to enable compilation for 64bit.
<br /><br />During these years I would (very) occasionally find a week or two of time to work on issues and features that required a deeper understanding of the xEdit core than the other project members possessed.
<br /><br />Around mid-2018 I found some spare time (thanks to the twins having started school by then) to come back to xEdit and was planning to do what I did before, spend a week or two on some difficult issues or features and then move on.
<br /><br />But what was planned as some quick fixes and new features has turned into a months-long project, for which I took time off from my usual work, with a huge number of improvements and fixes to xEdit that culminated in the release of xEdit 4 in mid-December.
<br /><br />All development work on xEdit since mid-2018 has been done by me, but Sharlikran has continued to provide valuable organizational work and [url=https://tes5edit.github.io/docs/]updating the online documentation[/url] that is now reachable through the Help button in the top right corner of the xEdit main form. Zilav and Sheson have provided valuable feedback.
<br /><br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=149]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1546949537-1292865187.png[/img][/center]
<br /><br />[b]You’ve recently released a significant milestone release with xEdit (v4.0), what would you say are the headline improvements in the update?
<br />[/b]
<br />The most visible improvement is probably support for UI Themes, both light and dark ones, as well as theme colour awareness of the conflict colours (a dark theme with lighter text on darker background will make xEdit automatically use a darker background and a lighter font colour to show the different conflict statuses).
<br /><br />A very important addition is full ESL support. This means that xEdit now supports loading modules in exactly the same way as the game engine, with ESL flagged ones being mapped into the FExxx space. Without this improvement, valid SSE and FO4 setups that had over 255 modules in total couldn't be loaded into xEdit. Now, if it's valid for the game, it's valid for xEdit.To go hand in hand with the addition of ESL support, the complete load order handling in xEdit has been overhauled and will now behave identically to the game engine for all supported games.
<br /><br />The module selection dialog, used both during program start and at various times while using xEdit has been completely reworked, it's much more informative, has support for saving and loading presets, and filtering.
<br /><br />Language and codepage support in xEdit has been completely reworked. Before, xEdit simply used the system ANSI code page for most strings. Now, xEdit is very explicit about what code page is used for which strings and there are various ways to configure this.
<br /><br />Previous xEdit versions were slow to start as they used to build the information required for the "Referenced By" tabs on every launch. They also didn't build reference information for the game master file automatically, which had to be done explicitly after the program was running if desired. Now, the second and subsequent starts after updating to a new version of xEdit will be much faster, as the required information is read in from a persistent cache on disk instead of having to be built on each launch. On the first launch after an update, this reference information is built once and then saved to disk in a cache. While this first launch is slower, it is still faster than launching the previous version and then building the reference information for the game master, as this building process will now run using a multi-threaded approach.
<br /><br />The ModGroups functionality has been completely reworked. This is a centrally important feature of xEdit, which has been present for over a decade, about which, hardly anyone was aware. It completely changes how you go about looking for conflicts with xEdit. This feature makes conflict detection and resolution even with gigantic load orders a breeze. ModGroups are, at their most basic, a way to tell xEdit, "if this set of modules is loaded in this order, then any conflict between them has been resolved and you need to consider only the winning override for each record". In previous versions, it was necessary to use a text editor to create .modgroups files outside of xEdit, which almost nobody did. In this version, ModGroup support is fully implemented inside xEdit, with ways to create, edit, and delete ModGroups right in xEdit, as well as the ability to reload a different selection of ModGroups at any time.
<br /><br />Aligning alignable array elements is one of these features that hardly anyone notices when it's added because it just feels so natural and right, but if you remove it after someone had just a few minutes to get used to it, it's instantly and painfully noticeable. There are a number of arrays where the order is important, one of the primary ones is lists of conditions.
<br /><br />This is best explained in a short example:
<br />Without this feature, a record with 2 overrides looked like this:
<br />[quote]A B B
<br />B C A
<br />C[/quote]
<br /><br />With alignment active, it will now look like this:
<br />[quote]A
<br />B B B
<br /> A
<br />C C[/quote]
<br /><br />The ability to filter in the View tab and to collapse nodes in the view tab hugely improves working with large records.
<br /><br />Two other new features go hand in hand with each other. One is the ability to create a delta patch. Given two versions of a module, xEdit can create a patch module that contains only exactly the records that are different between these two modules. The other is the ability to take a module (like such a delta patch, but also a plugin created in CK by editing records that already exist in a master) and merge this module into its master. Given the original version of a module and a delta patch, you can now re-create the 2nd version of that file by merging in the patch. This function can also replace the “merge into master” functionality of CK which normally requires the use of VC (version control).In addition to these big-ticket items above, there are hundreds of other smaller improvements and bug fixes all over the place.
<br /><br />On top of all this, which affects every existing game-specific version of xEdit, there is now full support for Fallout 76 in the form of FO76Edit.
<br /><br />[center][img width=1000,height=561]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/25859/25859-1544500571-1175465476.png[/img][/center]
<br /><br />[b]When Bethesda releases a new game, what is the process you go through in order to make xEdit compatible with the new plugins?
<br />[/b]
<br />This is a rather involved multi-step process which is helped along by a number of normally hidden functions in the xEdit core to analyse the structure of module files. It is usually possible to use the record definitions of an existing game as the basis.
<br /><br />The first step is to analyse the gross structure of the new game master, what record signatures and groups are contained in the file in what order?
<br /><br />Once that has been established and the basic record definitions updated or created, each record type (there are hundreds in the most current games) is analysed on its own to understand what subrecords it can contain, and how these subrecords are structured. This can get rather complicated, with arrays and structs of subrecords, sometimes nested multiple levels deep.
<br /><br />The next step is to analyse the contents of each sub record. Is there only a single value? Or a complex structure? Most locations where FormID, strings, or floats are stored can be found with the right analysis tools. This doesn't tell you what these values are used for or named. It only helps to identify what type of value is stored where. It is especially important to find any and all places that can contain FormIDs in this step. Without knowing the location of every single FormID, it is impossible for xEdit to add, remove, or sort masters for a file.
<br /><br />Up to this point, the availability of an official tool like CK is irrelevant. The process described above was followed to generate the record definitions for FO76Edit (starting from the record definitions for FO4 and modifying/extending them where analysis found discrepancies) and took about 150 man hours in total.
<br /><br />What follows after this depends on the availability of an official editor for the module files.
<br /><br />If no such tool is available, like currently in the case of FO76, it is still possible to try and make informed guesses about what the likely labels for some of these unknown new or changed values are, but there is a lot of guesswork involved.
<br /><br />If an official editor is available, it's possible to use that to create test plugins by putting unique values into each field visible in the editor for some record type, then load that test plugin into xEdit (or a number of other internal tools) and try to match up the information in the official editor with what has been written into the file. This is a very involved and repetitive process that can take hundreds of hours to further refine the record definitions.
<br /><br />[img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1547221240-338210184.png[/img]
<br /><br />[b]Perhaps the only noticeable gap in xEdit’s library of supported games is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - is there a technical reason why it hasn’t been supported?[/b]
<br /><br />There is indeed a technical reason for that. xEdit was originally developed for TES4: Oblivion. Oblivion was the first game for which Bethesda used FormIDs to identify individual records, and the fundamental design of xEdit is based on the assumption that records have FormIDs that identify them. This has been the case for any game that followed Oblivion so far.
<br /><br />Morrowind does not use FormIDs and has a much less "generalized" overall structure to its module files compared to later games. This makes it much harder to support Morrowind within the existing framework xEdit has established to support all later games.
<br /><br />I have recently been working on finding ways to support Morrowind in xEdit. It's very much a case of trying to get a square peg through a round hole. But I've been making progress by following an approach where I synthesize virtual FormIDs for records on load.
<br /><br />This will require a lot more work and time, but I believe TES3Edit is an achievable goal.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Have you ever wanted to make a tool like this for a different game engine?
<br />[/b]
<br />There are a number of other modable games for which I would love to have a tool like xEdit, and I've looked into the data format for these games. Unfortunately, none of them had a data format that would make adapting xEdit for them something that could be achieved with reasonable effort, if at all.
<br />I do have to congratulate Bethesda, the basic structure of their module files is much more suited for supporting setups with multiple mods than anything I've found in other games.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Given unlimited resources, what features would you like to bring to xEdit?
<br />[/b]
<br />Beyond Morrowind support, which I'm currently working on, there are a number of other big items I would like to address in the future.
<br /><br />The first one is to modularize the main form. That's what you see when you start xEdit, with the navigation tree view on the left and the tabs on the right. All of this is currently one giant strongly interconnected whole which has grown over the last decade. The goal here is to separate it all into distinct, isolated modules (the navigation tree view, the view tab, the spreadsheet tabs, the different functions that can be executed). This involves a large amount of work, and will not, initially, result in a significant change from the user's point of view. But it's really the required foundation for a lot of future work.
<br /><br />Once the main form is modularized, it's easier to build on that and support multiple navigation tree views (each one can be differently filtered) and views (showing different records concurrently).
<br /><br />This will also enable quality of life improvements like a scratch pad (an area where you can drag in anything from any record, be it a single value or a whole struct or array, then later use this as a drag source to copy into any assignment compatible place in other records).
<br /><br />The next big feature would be to support assets at the same level as modules are currently supported. The navigation tree view would list the .bsa/.ba2 files, as well as loose files folders in the correct order. You can open them up to explore the contained folders and files. When a file is selected, the view tab will show the different file versions, with information extracted appropriately based on file type, side by side, the same way that records are shown side by side. This should also include the ability to preview textures, possible models and other file types.
<br /><br />After that would be graphical visualization of path grids, navmeshes, and general CELL contents.
<br /><br />Outside of these really big items, there are countless more minor improvements that are possible, among them various quality of life improvements and improved error checking for navmeshes and other complex records.
<br /><br />Obviously, whenever Bethesda releases any new game based on a variation of the current module format, implementing support for that would have the priority.
<br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=149]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1546949530-245170919.png[/img][/center]
<br /><br />[b]I’m sure a large number of modders who’ve used xEdit would like to know, what is the best way to support the development of xEdit?
<br />[/b]
<br />The primary means of support would be to pledge on my [url=https://www.patreon.com/ElminsterAU]Patreon[/url] as this gives a somewhat predictable monthly income which would allow me to make long term plans in regards to how much time I can spend on xEdit development in the future.
<br /><br />Another possibility is direct donations via PayPal, either using the donation function here on NexusMods (which will forward you to my PayPal, Nexus Mods is not involved in the processing of it) or [url=https://www.paypal.me/ElminsterAU]directly[/url]. Both of these are currently easily reachable via buttons in the top right corner of the xEdit main form.
<br /><br />The last possibility is [url=https://ko-fi.com/ElminsterAU]Ko-fi[/url], which right now is simply another way to be forwarded to PayPal for a one-off donation so it doesn’t currently provide any benefit over making a direct PayPal donation. Please keep in mind that no matter what way you use to support xEdit development, the lower the amount, the higher the relative cut the payment processor takes. This is especially noticeable for very small amounts. If you donate $1, only about half of it will make it to me.
<br /><br />The huge amount of progress that has been made in xEdit 4 has only been possible by investing many hundreds of hours of development work, which, for me, came at a significant cost of lost income from my usual work. If I had purely worked on it in my spare time, xEdit 4 would still be 2-3 years in the future.
<br /><br />I obviously can't sustain ongoing xEdit development at a significant financial loss permanently, so the speed of progress for future xEdit development depends directly on the level of support I can achieve from the modding community.
<br /><br />At the time I'm writing this, current pledges on Patreon and average direct donations on PayPal together can finance roughly 1/8th of a month of full-time work on xEdit.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Is there anything else you’d like to say to the Nexus Mods community? [/b]
<br /><br />I've greatly enjoyed my work on xEdit and interactions with many members of the modding community. I'll try to answer any questions that come up in the comments of this interview. I am usually available on the xEdit [url=https://discord.gg/5t8RnNQ]Discord server[/url] (also reachable via the Discord button in the top right corner in the xEdit main form).
<br /><br />[line]
<br />A big thank you to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/167469]ElminsterAU[/url] for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597][b]BigBizkit[/b][/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975][b]Pickysaurus[/b][/url]. For our Mod Author feature this week, we’re talking to ElminsterAU best known for one of the essential tools for modding Creation Engine games. The xEdit application has become a staple in the toolkits of modders and mod authors from Oblivion to Fallout 76.
Author's Note: This article was updated at the request of ElminsterAU to add additional users to the team section. (11/01/2019 23:15 GMT)
For those in our community who want to know a little about the man behind the ElminsterAU handle, could you tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up in mid-west Germany, along the Rhine valley, in the '80s and early '90s, moved to Australia a bit over 16 years ago, and am now living in south-east Queensland, north of Brisbane, with my wife and our 6-year-old twins. I got my first computer (an Atari 520ST) when I was about 8 and was instantly fascinated with it. Not just playing games, but also figuring out how to make the computer do things I wanted it to do. I taught myself programming using Omikron-Basic by looking at the examples. Still have fond memories of that time.
A year later we got a "family PC" (a 286 at first, a bit later a 386) which I was using on and off, but the Atari was my mainstay for quite a few more years. I dabbled with GW-BASIC on the PC but found it lacking, and so, shortly after Turbo Pascal 4.0 came out, I started learning Pascal by looking at examples and a pocket-sized "Turbo Pascal 4.0 - The Reference" book. I've learned plenty of other programming languages over the years after that (Everything from Assembler to Smalltalk, and more recently Java, C# and many more), but Pascal (now in the form of Delphi) has been my language of choice ever since.
When I was 15, while still finishing school, I started my own registered trade (which required getting special permission from a family court as a minor), building custom PCs and doing custom development work for a number of customers.
﻿
After 10 years of school ("Realschule" in Germany), I started an industry apprenticeship as "Kommunikationselektroniker Fachrichtung Informationstechnik" (“Communication engineer specialized in information technology”) and finished it 1 year early with a top grade.
I was still doing custom development work during all that time and directly started full-time work for one of my major customers, Microtech where I quickly went from "new guy" to "in charge of designing and developing the application framework for our next generation software". After 4 eventful years at Microtech, during which time I also provided a completely new design for FlashFiler (the database engine I was using at Microtech) to TurboPower (the make for FlashFiler) for them to implement, I moved to Australia and was supported to start working on COSMOS which was using the new release of FlashFiler that was based on my design.
Shortly after I arrived in Australia, TurboPower unexpectedly got bought and exited the Delphi component market (the buyer just wanted the developers for their in-house projects), leaving a lot of FlashFiler users without any real way forward. So instead of working on COSMOS as planned, over the next 8 months, I developed a new database engine from scratch, NexusDB, which I've been working on, maintaining and improving, for the last 16 years.
Outside of computers, I've been an avid table-top RPG player and DM since my childhood, starting with 2nd edition DSA (Das Schwarze Auge, The Dark Eye, a German RPG) and later AD&amp;D2 and following editions.AD&amp;D got me started on reading fantasy novels. I have very fond memories of trying to read the original Dragonlance trilogy in English for the first time. This started me down the road as a ravenous reader of fantasy and science fictions books that continues until today.
Can you remember how you first got into gaming?
My earliest memories of "gaming" are of visiting a schoolmate and playing a whole bunch of games on his C64. The only title that has stuck in my mind from then is Giana Sisters, but there were many more.
When I got the Atari, I initially only had the high-resolution monochrome display for it, which means I couldn't play any of the commercial games on it. I have fond memories of my Dad driving me to the next larger city on weekends to visit a shop that had various freeware and shareware games and you could buy floppy disks with them for a small copy fee. One of my favourite games of these early days (I was 8 at the time) was Ballerburg.
When I finally got a colour monitor connected to the Atari my first game was Dungeon Master which cemented my love of RPGs. I also fondly remember spending countless hours with Airball. There are way too many games to remember them all by now.I've long lost count of the number of games I've played over the years. I've dabbled in pretty much any genre, but overall found the most enjoyment in role-playing, tactical, and strategy games. Ultima 7 is still very much on my mind as the first computer RPG where I really felt that the world is “alive”.
Do you still find the time to play any games?
I try to take the time to play, but it has gotten much rarer than I like. I try out a pretty decent number of games every year, but hardly find the time to actually finish them. It's one of the reasons why I enjoy working on xEdit so much, as it keeps me closer to my gaming roots.
For someone who is just dipping their toe into the modding scene and has never heard of xEdit, what does it do and why would they need it, how would you explain it?
I'll be explaining some of the history of xEdit as well, so please excuse me for maybe being a bit long-winded.
When I started playing Oblivion, it was the first time I came in contact with a game that had such an extensive modding scene. I downloaded a whole bunch of mods (mainly from tessource.net which has become NexusMods nowadays), threw them all together semi-randomly and tried to play... to find that many things were suddenly broken and didn't work right. Looking around, I found that there weren't really any tools available to help me understand why that is.
Not having yet encountered a computer-related problem that I couldn't solve by throwing a custom program at it, I started working on TES4View, which today has grown into xEdit.But its roots are in "conflict detection". Loading your complete setup of mods in the same way that the game does, and providing direct visual information about how the different modules conflict and interact with each other. Everyone who uses any mods in a game that xEdit supports should be using xEdit to look for conflicts in their setup, to make informed decisions about load order and necessary patches. There is really no alternative to this. Things like LOOT or information from the author on the mod pages can give you some general information, but at the end of the day, every modded setup is pretty much unique, and it is up to the user to understand how their installed mods interact with each other and to make sure any conflicts are correctly resolved. There are no shortcuts for this. Mods are not “DLC from a third party”. Making them work together will require a certain level of willingness and dedication to learning how they work and interact with each other.
After I initially developed TES4View, I found out that a large number of conflicts between mods were caused by what I then termed "Identical to Master" or ITM records. Basically, every mod available at that time contained anywhere between some and countless records that had nothing to do with the function of the mod and which were identical to the same record in the official game master. By removing these unnecessary records, many mods that were incompatible before could then be used together. As it proved difficult to actually remove these records using the Construction Set (the official editor for Oblivion, which was later called GECK for FO3/FNV, and is called CK (= Creation Kit) for TES5/SSE and FO4), I then started expanding TES4View, which could only be used to view module files, into TES4Edit, to allow directly modifying module files to fix problems.
This brings us to the 2nd major use of xEdit, the process that is now termed "cleaning". The goal of which is to find and remove unnecessary records from a mod to decrease the chance that it conflicts with other mods. This is a process that normally should be done by the mod author before the release of the mod.
Unfortunately, not all mod authors do this, and newer versions of xEdit might get better at detecting ITMs, which, if the mod author doesn't update their mod anymore, means that mod users might want to perform this operation if conflict detection shows that ITMs are causing unnecessary conflicts.
This is not a process that should be done ritually or habitually for every mod. It is no longer the early days of Oblivion modding when there were no tools for it and mod authors weren't aware of it, so every uploaded mod required cleaning. Nowadays, mod users should generally only perform it for mods that conflict detection has shown are causing unnecessary conflicts because of ITMs.TES4Edit quickly grow from just being able to remove ITMs to being able to fully edit all data in existing modules and even creating new modules from scratch.
The initial purpose of this was "conflict resolution" by creating patches, new modules that contained only conflicting records from two other mods, with their contents merged such that both original mods can work together. This is still one of the cornerstones of xEdit functionality for mod users today. While there may be pre-built patches for certain mod combinations available, almost every modded setup is unique, and there is a high chance that it contains combinations of conflicting mods for which no pre-build patches are available. Being able to create your own patches, based on the results of conflict detection, is an important skill that any mod user should have in their toolbox. Finally, once TES4Edit could reliably edit all information in module files, it became possible to "create new mods" from scratch, or make extensive changes to existing mods, using only TES4Edit. This really just builds on the skills developed for creating patches. Many mods on NexusMods today have been completely created in xEdit.Later I used TES4Edit as the basis for creating TES4LODGen, which was the first tool for Oblivion that could generate Tree/Object LOD information for your complete load order.
The software has been maintained by a team of people over its lifetime, could you tell us who the key developers are and how they contribute to the project?
The software that is xEdit today was initially closed source and I was the only developer working on it during the Oblivion, Fallout 3, and early Fallout New Vegas timeframe. If I remember correctly that should be everything up to Version 3.0.19.
After that, when it became clear to me that, because of work commitments and the birth of our twins, I would not have time to adequately maintain xEdit, I decided to open source the program.
Thankfully a group of dedicated people took the job while I went on hiatus, foremost Hlp, Zilav, Sharlikran.
Sharlikran﻿ took over a lot of the organizational work and has been working on decoding record definitions.
Zilav﻿ added the scripting engine and localization support that was necessary to support Skyrim.
Hlp﻿ did a large amount of work to enable save game viewing (which still a work in progress).
fireundubh contributed greatly to the Fallout 4 record definitions, hardcoded records, and various other additions and fixes.
Jonathan Ostrus made significant contributions to the Fallout 76 record definitions.
There are various other minor contributors that can be found on GitHub
All of them have been instrumental in creating the record definitions for Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Skyrim Special Edition.
Sheson joined the project to improve LOD generation in xLODGen and work on DynDOLOD (the program part of which is a fork of xEdit with additional functionality). He has also been instrumental in updating xEdit to enable compilation for 64bit.
During these years I would (very) occasionally find a week or two of time to work on issues and features that required a deeper understanding of the xEdit core than the other project members possessed.
Around mid-2018 I found some spare time (thanks to the twins having started school by then) to come back to xEdit and was planning to do what I did before, spend a week or two on some difficult issues or features and then move on.
But what was planned as some quick fixes and new features has turned into a months-long project, for which I took time off from my usual work, with a huge number of improvements and fixes to xEdit that culminated in the release of xEdit 4 in mid-December.
All development work on xEdit since mid-2018 has been done by me, but Sharlikran has continued to provide valuable organizational work and updating the online documentation that is now reachable through the Help button in the top right corner of the xEdit main form. Zilav and Sheson have provided valuable feedback.
You’ve recently released a significant milestone release with xEdit (v4.0), what would you say are the headline improvements in the update?
The most visible improvement is probably support for UI Themes, both light and dark ones, as well as theme colour awareness of the conflict colours (a dark theme with lighter text on darker background will make xEdit automatically use a darker background and a lighter font colour to show the different conflict statuses).
A very important addition is full ESL support. This means that xEdit now supports loading modules in exactly the same way as the game engine, with ESL flagged ones being mapped into the FExxx space. Without this improvement, valid SSE and FO4 setups that had over 255 modules in total couldn't be loaded into xEdit. Now, if it's valid for the game, it's valid for xEdit.To go hand in hand with the addition of ESL support, the complete load order handling in xEdit has been overhauled and will now behave identically to the game engine for all supported games.
The module selection dialog, used both during program start and at various times while using xEdit has been completely reworked, it's much more informative, has support for saving and loading presets, and filtering.
Language and codepage support in xEdit has been completely reworked. Before, xEdit simply used the system ANSI code page for most strings. Now, xEdit is very explicit about what code page is used for which strings and there are various ways to configure this.
Previous xEdit versions were slow to start as they used to build the information required for the "Referenced By" tabs on every launch. They also didn't build reference information for the game master file automatically, which had to be done explicitly after the program was running if desired. Now, the second and subsequent starts after updating to a new version of xEdit will be much faster, as the required information is read in from a persistent cache on disk instead of having to be built on each launch. On the first launch after an update, this reference information is built once and then saved to disk in a cache. While this first launch is slower, it is still faster than launching the previous version and then building the reference information for the game master, as this building process will now run using a multi-threaded approach.
The ModGroups functionality has been completely reworked. This is a centrally important feature of xEdit, which has been present for over a decade, about which, hardly anyone was aware. It completely changes how you go about looking for conflicts with xEdit. This feature makes conflict detection and resolution even with gigantic load orders a breeze. ModGroups are, at their most basic, a way to tell xEdit, "if this set of modules is loaded in this order, then any conflict between them has been resolved and you need to consider only the winning override for each record". In previous versions, it was necessary to use a text editor to create .modgroups files outside of xEdit, which almost nobody did. In this version, ModGroup support is fully implemented inside xEdit, with ways to create, edit, and delete ModGroups right in xEdit, as well as the ability to reload a different selection of ModGroups at any time.
Aligning alignable array elements is one of these features that hardly anyone notices when it's added because it just feels so natural and right, but if you remove it after someone had just a few minutes to get used to it, it's instantly and painfully noticeable. There are a number of arrays where the order is important, one of the primary ones is lists of conditions.
This is best explained in a short example:
Without this feature, a record with 2 overrides looked like this:
A B B
B C A
C
With alignment active, it will now look like this:
A
B B B
A
C C
The ability to filter in the View tab and to collapse nodes in the view tab hugely improves working with large records.
Two other new features go hand in hand with each other. One is the ability to create a delta patch. Given two versions of a module, xEdit can create a patch module that contains only exactly the records that are different between these two modules. The other is the ability to take a module (like such a delta patch, but also a plugin created in CK by editing records that already exist in a master) and merge this module into its master. Given the original version of a module and a delta patch, you can now re-create the 2nd version of that file by merging in the patch. This function can also replace the “merge into master” functionality of CK which normally requires the use of VC (version control).In addition to these big-ticket items above, there are hundreds of other smaller improvements and bug fixes all over the place.
On top of all this, which affects every existing game-specific version of xEdit, there is now full support for Fallout 76 in the form of FO76Edit.
When Bethesda releases a new game, what is the process you go through in order to make xEdit compatible with the new plugins?
This is a rather involved multi-step process which is helped along by a number of normally hidden functions in the xEdit core to analyse the structure of module files. It is usually possible to use the record definitions of an existing game as the basis.
The first step is to analyse the gross structure of the new game master, what record signatures and groups are contained in the file in what order?
Once that has been established and the basic record definitions updated or created, each record type (there are hundreds in the most current games) is analysed on its own to understand what subrecords it can contain, and how these subrecords are structured. This can get rather complicated, with arrays and structs of subrecords, sometimes nested multiple levels deep.
The next step is to analyse the contents of each sub record. Is there only a single value? Or a complex structure? Most locations where FormID, strings, or floats are stored can be found with the right analysis tools. This doesn't tell you what these values are used for or named. It only helps to identify what type of value is stored where. It is especially important to find any and all places that can contain FormIDs in this step. Without knowing the location of every single FormID, it is impossible for xEdit to add, remove, or sort masters for a file.
Up to this point, the availability of an official tool like CK is irrelevant. The process described above was followed to generate the record definitions for FO76Edit (starting from the record definitions for FO4 and modifying/extending them where analysis found discrepancies) and took about 150 man hours in total.
What follows after this depends on the availability of an official editor for the module files.
If no such tool is available, like currently in the case of FO76, it is still possible to try and make informed guesses about what the likely labels for some of these unknown new or changed values are, but there is a lot of guesswork involved.
If an official editor is available, it's possible to use that to create test plugins by putting unique values into each field visible in the editor for some record type, then load that test plugin into xEdit (or a number of other internal tools) and try to match up the information in the official editor with what has been written into the file. This is a very involved and repetitive process that can take hundreds of hours to further refine the record definitions.
Perhaps the only noticeable gap in xEdit’s library of supported games is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - is there a technical reason why it hasn’t been supported?
There is indeed a technical reason for that. xEdit was originally developed for TES4: Oblivion. Oblivion was the first game for which Bethesda used FormIDs to identify individual records, and the fundamental design of xEdit is based on the assumption that records have FormIDs that identify them. This has been the case for any game that followed Oblivion so far.
Morrowind does not use FormIDs and has a much less "generalized" overall structure to its module files compared to later games. This makes it much harder to support Morrowind within the existing framework xEdit has established to support all later games.
I have recently been working on finding ways to support Morrowind in xEdit. It's very much a case of trying to get a square peg through a round hole. But I've been making progress by following an approach where I synthesize virtual FormIDs for records on load.
This will require a lot more work and time, but I believe TES3Edit is an achievable goal.
Have you ever wanted to make a tool like this for a different game engine?
There are a number of other modable games for which I would love to have a tool like xEdit, and I've looked into the data format for these games. Unfortunately, none of them had a data format that would make adapting xEdit for them something that could be achieved with reasonable effort, if at all.
I do have to congratulate Bethesda, the basic structure of their module files is much more suited for supporting setups with multiple mods than anything I've found in other games.
Given unlimited resources, what features would you like to bring to xEdit?
Beyond Morrowind support, which I'm currently working on, there are a number of other big items I would like to address in the future.
The first one is to modularize the main form. That's what you see when you start xEdit, with the navigation tree view on the left and the tabs on the right. All of this is currently one giant strongly interconnected whole which has grown over the last decade. The goal here is to separate it all into distinct, isolated modules (the navigation tree view, the view tab, the spreadsheet tabs, the different functions that can be executed). This involves a large amount of work, and will not, initially, result in a significant change from the user's point of view. But it's really the required foundation for a lot of future work.
Once the main form is modularized, it's easier to build on that and support multiple navigation tree views (each one can be differently filtered) and views (showing different records concurrently).
This will also enable quality of life improvements like a scratch pad (an area where you can drag in anything from any record, be it a single value or a whole struct or array, then later use this as a drag source to copy into any assignment compatible place in other records).
The next big feature would be to support assets at the same level as modules are currently supported. The navigation tree view would list the .bsa/.ba2 files, as well as loose files folders in the correct order. You can open them up to explore the contained folders and files. When a file is selected, the view tab will show the different file versions, with information extracted appropriately based on file type, side by side, the same way that records are shown side by side. This should also include the ability to preview textures, possible models and other file types.
After that would be graphical visualization of path grids, navmeshes, and general CELL contents.
Outside of these really big items, there are countless more minor improvements that are possible, among them various quality of life improvements and improved error checking for navmeshes and other complex records.
Obviously, whenever Bethesda releases any new game based on a variation of the current module format, implementing support for that would have the priority.
I’m sure a large number of modders who’ve used xEdit would like to know, what is the best way to support the development of xEdit?
The primary means of support would be to pledge on my Patreon as this gives a somewhat predictable monthly income which would allow me to make long term plans in regards to how much time I can spend on xEdit development in the future.
Another possibility is direct donations via PayPal, either using the donation function here on NexusMods (which will forward you to my PayPal, Nexus Mods is not involved in the processing of it) or directly. Both of these are currently easily reachable via buttons in the top right corner of the xEdit main form.
The last possibility is Ko-fi, which right now is simply another way to be forwarded to PayPal for a one-off donation so it doesn’t currently provide any benefit over making a direct PayPal donation. Please keep in mind that no matter what way you use to support xEdit development, the lower the amount, the higher the relative cut the payment processor takes. This is especially noticeable for very small amounts. If you donate $1, only about half of it will make it to me.
The huge amount of progress that has been made in xEdit 4 has only been possible by investing many hundreds of hours of development work, which, for me, came at a significant cost of lost income from my usual work. If I had purely worked on it in my spare time, xEdit 4 would still be 2-3 years in the future.
I obviously can't sustain ongoing xEdit development at a significant financial loss permanently, so the speed of progress for future xEdit development depends directly on the level of support I can achieve from the modding community.
At the time I'm writing this, current pledges on Patreon and average direct donations on PayPal together can finance roughly 1/8th of a month of full-time work on xEdit.
Is there anything else you’d like to say to the Nexus Mods community?
I've greatly enjoyed my work on xEdit and interactions with many members of the modding community. I'll try to answer any questions that come up in the comments of this interview. I am usually available on the xEdit Discord server (also reachable via the Discord button in the top right corner in the xEdit main form).
A big thank you to ElminsterAU for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to BigBizkit or Pickysaurus. Fri, 11 Jan 2019 16:07:06 +0000InterviewsPickysaurushttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13911
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/1391133Nexus Mods/GOG Giveaway - Winner's Choice! #3To celebrate the new year we are giving away another 5 GOG keys for a game of your choice redeemable at [url=https://www.gog.com/?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com[/url]. If you were not among the lucky winners during the last giveaways, now is your last chance!
<br /><br />Please note that a [url=https://login.gog.com/login?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com user account is required[/url] both for participation, as well as for redeeming the prize.
<br /><br />In order to ensure the winner comes from the Nexus Mods community, there are some mandatory steps to ensure your eligibility.
<br /><br />[list]
<br />[*]Leave a comment on this article. You can say anything you want (site rules still apply)
<br />[*]Log into the Gleam widget with your preferred method. (Facebook/Email)
<br />[*]Click the second entry action that says "Leave a comment on Nexus Mods"
<br />[*]Enter your full Nexus Mods username into the field (check your spelling!)
<br />[/list]
<br />If you forget to leave a comment or don't include a valid username, you'll lose out on your chance to win. If you are not sure what to write as a comment, why don't you tell us about your favourite holiday tradition?
<br /><br />Good luck and thank you for participating!
<br /><br /><br />[url=https://gleam.io/PgrWa/gog-winter-sale-giveaway-winners-choice-3][size=5][s]Click here to enter for your chance to win 1 of 5 Game Codes for a game of your choice from GOG.com[/s][/size][/url]
<br />[i][size=1](Entries close at 16:59 GMT on 6th January 2019 - all prizes must be redeemed by the end of January 2019 or they will expire.)
<br /><br /><br />[/size][/i]Winners:
<br />PorcupineQuil
<br />ClueGlue
<br />Can12
<br />edgarasKFC
<br />ollieeganTo celebrate the new year we are giving away another 5 GOG keys for a game of your choice redeemable at GOG.com. If you were not among the lucky winners during the last giveaways, now is your last chance!
Please note that a GOG.com user account is required both for participation, as well as for redeeming the prize.
In order to ensure the winner comes from the Nexus Mods community, there are some mandatory steps to ensure your eligibility.
Leave a comment on this article. You can say anything you want (site rules still apply)
Log into the Gleam widget with your preferred method. (Facebook/Email)
Click the second entry action that says "Leave a comment on Nexus Mods"
Enter your full Nexus Mods username into the field (check your spelling!)
If you forget to leave a comment or don't include a valid username, you'll lose out on your chance to win. If you are not sure what to write as a comment, why don't you tell us about your favourite holiday tradition?
Good luck and thank you for participating!
Click here to enter for your chance to win 1 of 5 Game Codes for a game of your choice from GOG.com
(Entries close at 16:59 GMT on 6th January 2019 - all prizes must be redeemed by the end of January 2019 or they will expire.)
Winners:
PorcupineQuil
ClueGlue
Can12
edgarasKFC
ollieeganMon, 31 Dec 2018 08:59:45 +0000CompetitionBigBizkithttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13901
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13901886The Commandant of Creations - CDanteToday we are talking to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/1008186?tab=user+files]CDante[/url], a long time member of our site and prolific modder, who has brought us some amazing Fallout 4 mods such as [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22442]Transfer Settlements[/url], [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10660]Visible Companion Affinity[/url], or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/34002]Ninja Smoke Bombs[/url]!
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1545404045-822165758.jpeg[/img]﻿[/center]
<br /><br />[b]BigBizkit: You are well known in the community for all your Fallout 4 mods, but, as always, we like to start the interview off by you telling us a bit about yourself.[/b]
<br /><br />CDante: Hey, sure! I’m an ‘80s kid from Europe, playing video games since the age of 4, so things I feel nostalgic for often date three decades back. When some of my friends tell me World of Warcraft was their childhood I feel very old, but I like to think I’m not THAT old yet. I was born and have lived most of my life in the beautiful city of Budapest. I work as an IT programmer and started modding shortly after the release of Fallout 4, almost three years ago now. It has become my number one hobby ever since and been consuming my free time almost exclusively.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]As if it was planned: on December 31st of this year, it will be your 10-year anniversary on Nexus Mods! Do you recall how it all got started for you, what made you want to join, and what made you want to make and release your own mods?[/b]
<br /><br />I remember why I registered because I clearly remember Fallout 3’s impact on my life 10 years ago. (It was almost as intense as Fallout 4 was in 2015.) I heard about Morrowind and Oblivion - sure - but when it came to RPGs I always preferred isometric games like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and of course, I absolutely loved the classic Fallout games from the late ‘90s. I always loved post-apocalyptic themes in books and movies so the franchise just hit the perfect notes for me. Needless to say, when Fallout 3 came out in 2008 I HAD TO try it. And that’s how it became my first 3D RPG and the first Bethesda game I’ve ever played. And man, I got hooked… I remember I couldn’t stop playing it for months, literally day and night. I tried to max out everything, and absolutely loved the companion system – I wanted to have them all at the same time! That’s how I got introduced to the in-game console, and that’s why I started to download mods for a game for the first time. But I wasn’t really active on the site for many years, later I returned for Skyrim mods, then, of course, I had to download some cool mods when XCOM got a reboot – one of my other beloved franchises from the last century – but overall I’ve been really just lurking here up until my first mod release in early 2016.
<br />
<br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/10660-0-1466410559.jpg[/img]﻿[/center]
<br />[b]Some of your most popular mod creations are [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10660]Visible Companion Affinity[/url] and, of course, [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22442]Transfer Settlements[/url]. What was the inspiration for those two in particular?[/b]
<br />
<br />Like in Fallout 3, the permanent companions in all Bethesda titles are a big part in my game experience and why I love playing these games. In Fallout 4 they definitely delivered on that part, especially with the new affinity system they introduced. I wanted to see how I progress with them, how my actions affect the numbers behind the scenes so I could max out my relationship with each of them. So I started to look into Papyrus scripting, and Visible Companion Affinity was born.
<br /><br />Later on, I released more and more script-based mods, and by the end of 2016 Transfer Settlements was just something I knew I could do and would be a tool that would greatly benefit the community. So I uploaded [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpb4j0d36cY]a first proof of concept video in early 2017[/url]. The reception was amazing, it really felt great reading comments from Gopher, Oxhorn, JuiceHead and many others, so in the next three months, I was working really hard to make it a reality. I received a lot of help from [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/2950481]Expired6978[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/17152929]registrator2000[/url] as I was completely new to F4SE plugins at the time.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]From all the mods you have created (including contributions to other mods) do you have a favourite or one that you are most proud of?[/b]
<br /><br />I always felt Transfer Settlements is my magnum opus and probably the most important of all my mods. But apart from that, I’m really proud of The Wasteland Codex as well. It’s amazing to work with such a quality content that the folks at the [url=https://www.youtube.com/user/ShoddyCast]ShoddyCast[/url] and [url=https://fallout.gamepedia.com/The_Vault_Fallout_Wiki]The Vault wiki[/url] provide, and so satisfying to put the perfect voice for the perfect Fallout chronicler into the game, courtesy of Mr. Jason Damron.
<br /><br />Oh, and of course GTKYMA Radio featuring interview #7 BigBizkit! Jokes aside, at the time it was a huge deal for me to work together with Darren on a mod, and putting the same interview series into the game that actually inspired me to become a modder just a few months earlier.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]You also have a little bit of a reputation for creating tongue-in-cheek mods and having fun with your creations in general. [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/32054]Uncle Pete’s Special[/url]﻿, or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/30880]Helium Balloon[/url] are good examples of that. Where do you get the ideas for your more silly mods? Do you have a favourite humorous mod from another author?
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1545404221-457236812.png[/img]﻿ [img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1545404229-251316825.png[/img]﻿[/center][/b]
<br />When it comes to memes I prefer humour rather than hate, and when it comes to seasonal mods I prefer April Fools over Halloween, Christmas or anything else. I don’t know. Humour was always a big part of my personality I guess, and these ideas usually just come up while following the latest buzz, and then I quickly implement them as mods within a few hours before they would get anything more serious or overly complicated. Uncle Pete’s Special was created while I was bored watching the 24 hour livestream of Fallout 76’s announcement. The idea of the Helium Balloon occurred to me when somehow I ended up browsing through my GOG library, and started playing a few hours with my old favorite point &amp; click game, Monkey Island 3. I created [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23198]Press X to Shaun[/url] when I came across [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhG9D9UO7c]a YouTube video[/url] of that old Heavy Rain “Shaun glitch” and realized that it’s perfect for Fallout 4 since that’s the name of the Sole Survivor’s kid as well. And I guess [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/24914]The Creation Club[/url] was me overreacting to a pun just a bit.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Being a mod author who is mostly focused on the Fallout series, you have been the first author to release [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76/mods/1]a mod for Fallout 76[/url]. Where do you think modding for the Fallout franchise is headed in general? What would you want to see for future titles in terms of modding?[/b]
<br /><br />I created that very simple main menu loop for 76 as a proof of concept and with the sole purpose of giving the modding community a small nudge. It was good to see the number of 76 mods growing over the next weeks, and today I couldn’t even play the game without reg2k’s [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76/mods/32]Better Inventory[/url].
<br /><br />When it comes to 76 in general, I’m probably more optimistic than most. I hope, after the many controversies, Bethesda will find their way back to their fans eventually by ironing out the numerous issues the game still has and starting to provide a service and new content that worth the full price of the game for any Fallout fan. And in the meantime – while our hands are obviously tied for a long time – probably for more than a year still – I’m pretty sure us modders will do our part and will find more and more creative ways to make this game better with the tools we currently have. I recently spent three days dissecting the vendor/container menu, trying out numerous ways to show up an additional bit of info on the UI whether plans or recipes are already learned by the player. While I certainly failed to come up with a working solution, I’m pretty sure there’s someone out there in the community who will think outside the box and release an instant "Mod of the Month" with a different approach.
<br /><br />However, my excitement for the upcoming 76 private servers is moderate at this point. Sure I plan to have my own server and I’m definitely going to try out new things on the server-side of modding that we cannot touch today. But who knows if that’s going to be in late 2019 or the second quarter of 2020, and how many players will opt to switch to a private server then? Will they do that even if they have to start a new character for it? How many users would download mods if those mods could only be installed by server owners through Bethesda.net? These are the questions I’ve been thinking of recently, so I’m a bit sceptical and trying to keep my excitement at bay for the time being.
<br /><br />Eventually, I can imagine 76 as a hub where players meet occasionally to play together, a sandbox where all of us have our maxed-out lvl 200+ characters with the perfect C.A.M.P. builds, everything unlocked, every quest completed, and we will return to this playground over and over when Bethesda releases some new content. And in the meantime, we play the more meaningful first-person adventures of earlier titles like we always did, and that’s fine with me, to be honest.
<br /><br />One thing is for sure, I still have twenty times more WIP projects and mod ideas for Fallout 4 than for 76 that I definitely want to finish at some point.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Do you have any plans for the near future when it comes to mod releases?[/b]
<br /><br />I’m slowly working on a quest that’s both going to be a standalone mod and part of [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27629]The Wasteland Codex[/url]. I don’t think it’s a huge spoiler if I say it’s going to feature ED-NA and The Storyteller, and since I started to play Fallout 4 again, I also want to finish some smaller quality-of-life mods that I started working on earlier this year – one that lets you whistle Dogmeat to issue him commands, for example, to find the corpses of your recently killed enemies; another one that lets you command your companions to automatically fix their own Power Armor; and I’ve been also working on a winter mod that makes your breath visible.
<br /><br />[center][youtube]DyFX5jbhxZc[/youtube][/center]
<br />Of course these are smaller projects, the big one is always Transfer Settlements, and currently, my biggest mountain to climb is to be able to export settlements directly as ESP or ESL plugins.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Outside of modding or programming, what are some things you like to do for fun?[/b]
<br />
<br />Before modding, miniature tabletop games have been a huge part of my life for decades, especially Warhammer 40k. I have even organised a yearly convention for the hobby here in Budapest for nine consecutive years. I play airsoft occasionally, that’s another hobby that has been part of my life for a decade now. I also play the bass.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]What are some of the games you grew up with and are you playing any games currently? Do you use any mods?[/b]
<br /><br />Apart from those I already mentioned. I’m a huge fan of point &amp; click adventure games. LucasArts is MY childhood, and I love to see the genre living its renaissance lately. I can always find new point &amp; click games on GOG or Steam that look retro, but came out in recent years. They give me nostalgia even though I’ve never played them before. I also have a huge backlog of open-world titles – I’ve yet to play the DLCs of The Witcher 3 and definitely want to try out Kingdom Come: Deliverance, both of which I plan to mod for sure.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Onto a completely different topic: how did you spend Christmas?
<br />[/b]
<br />Traditionally I visit grandparents in Budapest on the 23rd, then I spend Christmas out of town at my father’s. He is an amazing chef so it’s always a great time to be hungry when I’m there.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Do you have any New Year’s resolutions - modding related or otherwise?[/b]
<br /><br />First of all, have to return to the gym after all this food as soon as possible. I have also decided to release smaller updates for my older mods to fix some minor issues that have been present for ages. It would be awesome to start the New Year with cleaner bug report sections. I would also like to upload videos to my YouTube channel more often. I have a ton of tutorials planned and it would be nice to finish all my WIP modding projects in 2019. There’s one in particular that I started back in 2016 and it hurts me to even think about it that it was more than two years ago and never got finished – talking about the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkJEez89i-0]real-time hair and beard growing for Fallout 4[/url].
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Is there anything else you would like to say to the Nexus Mods community?[/b]
<br /><br />[url=https://www.patreon.com/ElminsterAU]Support ElminsterAU and the xEdit Team on Patreon[/url]! For many mod makers, the editor they created is just as important to modding as the Creation Kit, if not more.
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/10660-0-1466402910.gif[/img]﻿[/center]
<br />[line]
<br />A big thank you to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/1008186]CDante[/url] for answering our questions. As always, if there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597][b]BigBizkit[/b][/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975][b]Pickysaurus[/b][/url]. Today we are talking to CDante, a long time member of our site and prolific modder, who has brought us some amazing Fallout 4 mods such as Transfer Settlements, Visible Companion Affinity, or Ninja Smoke Bombs!
﻿
BigBizkit: You are well known in the community for all your Fallout 4 mods, but, as always, we like to start the interview off by you telling us a bit about yourself.
CDante: Hey, sure! I’m an ‘80s kid from Europe, playing video games since the age of 4, so things I feel nostalgic for often date three decades back. When some of my friends tell me World of Warcraft was their childhood I feel very old, but I like to think I’m not THAT old yet. I was born and have lived most of my life in the beautiful city of Budapest. I work as an IT programmer and started modding shortly after the release of Fallout 4, almost three years ago now. It has become my number one hobby ever since and been consuming my free time almost exclusively.
As if it was planned: on December 31st of this year, it will be your 10-year anniversary on Nexus Mods! Do you recall how it all got started for you, what made you want to join, and what made you want to make and release your own mods?
I remember why I registered because I clearly remember Fallout 3’s impact on my life 10 years ago. (It was almost as intense as Fallout 4 was in 2015.) I heard about Morrowind and Oblivion - sure - but when it came to RPGs I always preferred isometric games like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and of course, I absolutely loved the classic Fallout games from the late ‘90s. I always loved post-apocalyptic themes in books and movies so the franchise just hit the perfect notes for me. Needless to say, when Fallout 3 came out in 2008 I HAD TO try it. And that’s how it became my first 3D RPG and the first Bethesda game I’ve ever played. And man, I got hooked… I remember I couldn’t stop playing it for months, literally day and night. I tried to max out everything, and absolutely loved the companion system – I wanted to have them all at the same time! That’s how I got introduced to the in-game console, and that’s why I started to download mods for a game for the first time. But I wasn’t really active on the site for many years, later I returned for Skyrim mods, then, of course, I had to download some cool mods when XCOM got a reboot – one of my other beloved franchises from the last century – but overall I’ve been really just lurking here up until my first mod release in early 2016.
﻿
Some of your most popular mod creations are Visible Companion Affinity and, of course, Transfer Settlements. What was the inspiration for those two in particular?
Like in Fallout 3, the permanent companions in all Bethesda titles are a big part in my game experience and why I love playing these games. In Fallout 4 they definitely delivered on that part, especially with the new affinity system they introduced. I wanted to see how I progress with them, how my actions affect the numbers behind the scenes so I could max out my relationship with each of them. So I started to look into Papyrus scripting, and Visible Companion Affinity was born.
Later on, I released more and more script-based mods, and by the end of 2016 Transfer Settlements was just something I knew I could do and would be a tool that would greatly benefit the community. So I uploaded a first proof of concept video in early 2017. The reception was amazing, it really felt great reading comments from Gopher, Oxhorn, JuiceHead and many others, so in the next three months, I was working really hard to make it a reality. I received a lot of help from Expired6978 and registrator2000 as I was completely new to F4SE plugins at the time.
From all the mods you have created (including contributions to other mods) do you have a favourite or one that you are most proud of?
I always felt Transfer Settlements is my magnum opus and probably the most important of all my mods. But apart from that, I’m really proud of The Wasteland Codex as well. It’s amazing to work with such a quality content that the folks at the ShoddyCast and The Vault wiki provide, and so satisfying to put the perfect voice for the perfect Fallout chronicler into the game, courtesy of Mr. Jason Damron.
Oh, and of course GTKYMA Radio featuring interview #7 BigBizkit! Jokes aside, at the time it was a huge deal for me to work together with Darren on a mod, and putting the same interview series into the game that actually inspired me to become a modder just a few months earlier.
You also have a little bit of a reputation for creating tongue-in-cheek mods and having fun with your creations in general. Uncle Pete’s Special﻿, or Helium Balloon are good examples of that. Where do you get the ideas for your more silly mods? Do you have a favourite humorous mod from another author?
﻿ ﻿
When it comes to memes I prefer humour rather than hate, and when it comes to seasonal mods I prefer April Fools over Halloween, Christmas or anything else. I don’t know. Humour was always a big part of my personality I guess, and these ideas usually just come up while following the latest buzz, and then I quickly implement them as mods within a few hours before they would get anything more serious or overly complicated. Uncle Pete’s Special was created while I was bored watching the 24 hour livestream of Fallout 76’s announcement. The idea of the Helium Balloon occurred to me when somehow I ended up browsing through my GOG library, and started playing a few hours with my old favorite point &amp; click game, Monkey Island 3. I created Press X to Shaun when I came across a YouTube video of that old Heavy Rain “Shaun glitch” and realized that it’s perfect for Fallout 4 since that’s the name of the Sole Survivor’s kid as well. And I guess The Creation Club was me overreacting to a pun just a bit.
Being a mod author who is mostly focused on the Fallout series, you have been the first author to release a mod for Fallout 76. Where do you think modding for the Fallout franchise is headed in general? What would you want to see for future titles in terms of modding?
I created that very simple main menu loop for 76 as a proof of concept and with the sole purpose of giving the modding community a small nudge. It was good to see the number of 76 mods growing over the next weeks, and today I couldn’t even play the game without reg2k’s Better Inventory.
When it comes to 76 in general, I’m probably more optimistic than most. I hope, after the many controversies, Bethesda will find their way back to their fans eventually by ironing out the numerous issues the game still has and starting to provide a service and new content that worth the full price of the game for any Fallout fan. And in the meantime – while our hands are obviously tied for a long time – probably for more than a year still – I’m pretty sure us modders will do our part and will find more and more creative ways to make this game better with the tools we currently have. I recently spent three days dissecting the vendor/container menu, trying out numerous ways to show up an additional bit of info on the UI whether plans or recipes are already learned by the player. While I certainly failed to come up with a working solution, I’m pretty sure there’s someone out there in the community who will think outside the box and release an instant "Mod of the Month" with a different approach.
However, my excitement for the upcoming 76 private servers is moderate at this point. Sure I plan to have my own server and I’m definitely going to try out new things on the server-side of modding that we cannot touch today. But who knows if that’s going to be in late 2019 or the second quarter of 2020, and how many players will opt to switch to a private server then? Will they do that even if they have to start a new character for it? How many users would download mods if those mods could only be installed by server owners through Bethesda.net? These are the questions I’ve been thinking of recently, so I’m a bit sceptical and trying to keep my excitement at bay for the time being.
Eventually, I can imagine 76 as a hub where players meet occasionally to play together, a sandbox where all of us have our maxed-out lvl 200+ characters with the perfect C.A.M.P. builds, everything unlocked, every quest completed, and we will return to this playground over and over when Bethesda releases some new content. And in the meantime, we play the more meaningful first-person adventures of earlier titles like we always did, and that’s fine with me, to be honest.
One thing is for sure, I still have twenty times more WIP projects and mod ideas for Fallout 4 than for 76 that I definitely want to finish at some point.
Do you have any plans for the near future when it comes to mod releases?
I’m slowly working on a quest that’s both going to be a standalone mod and part of The Wasteland Codex. I don’t think it’s a huge spoiler if I say it’s going to feature ED-NA and The Storyteller, and since I started to play Fallout 4 again, I also want to finish some smaller quality-of-life mods that I started working on earlier this year – one that lets you whistle Dogmeat to issue him commands, for example, to find the corpses of your recently killed enemies; another one that lets you command your companions to automatically fix their own Power Armor; and I’ve been also working on a winter mod that makes your breath visible.
DyFX5jbhxZc
Of course these are smaller projects, the big one is always Transfer Settlements, and currently, my biggest mountain to climb is to be able to export settlements directly as ESP or ESL plugins.
Outside of modding or programming, what are some things you like to do for fun?
Before modding, miniature tabletop games have been a huge part of my life for decades, especially Warhammer 40k. I have even organised a yearly convention for the hobby here in Budapest for nine consecutive years. I play airsoft occasionally, that’s another hobby that has been part of my life for a decade now. I also play the bass.
What are some of the games you grew up with and are you playing any games currently? Do you use any mods?
Apart from those I already mentioned. I’m a huge fan of point &amp; click adventure games. LucasArts is MY childhood, and I love to see the genre living its renaissance lately. I can always find new point &amp; click games on GOG or Steam that look retro, but came out in recent years. They give me nostalgia even though I’ve never played them before. I also have a huge backlog of open-world titles – I’ve yet to play the DLCs of The Witcher 3 and definitely want to try out Kingdom Come: Deliverance, both of which I plan to mod for sure.
Onto a completely different topic: how did you spend Christmas?
Traditionally I visit grandparents in Budapest on the 23rd, then I spend Christmas out of town at my father’s. He is an amazing chef so it’s always a great time to be hungry when I’m there.
Do you have any New Year’s resolutions - modding related or otherwise?
First of all, have to return to the gym after all this food as soon as possible. I have also decided to release smaller updates for my older mods to fix some minor issues that have been present for ages. It would be awesome to start the New Year with cleaner bug report sections. I would also like to upload videos to my YouTube channel more often. I have a ton of tutorials planned and it would be nice to finish all my WIP modding projects in 2019. There’s one in particular that I started back in 2016 and it hurts me to even think about it that it was more than two years ago and never got finished – talking about the real-time hair and beard growing for Fallout 4.
Is there anything else you would like to say to the Nexus Mods community?
Support ElminsterAU and the xEdit Team on Patreon! For many mod makers, the editor they created is just as important to modding as the Creation Kit, if not more.
﻿
A big thank you to CDante for answering our questions. As always, if there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to BigBizkit or Pickysaurus. Fri, 28 Dec 2018 12:29:31 +0000InterviewsBigBizkithttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13906
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/1390613Nexus Mods/GOG Giveaway - Winner's Choice! #2Just when you thought one giveaway was enough, we've got another one for you this week. [b]5 more free games of your choice[/b] from [url=https://www.gog.com/?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com[/url] are up for grabs. Now there's a Christmas present you'll definitely like!
<br /><br />Please note that a [b][url=https://login.gog.com/login?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com user account is required[/url][/b] both for participation, as well as for redeeming the prize.
<br /><br />In order to ensure the winner comes from the Nexus Mods community, there are some mandatory steps to ensure your eligibility.
<br /><br />[list]
<br />[*]Leave a comment on this article. You can say anything you want (site rules still apply)
<br />[*]Log into the Gleam widget with your preferred method. (Facebook/Email)
<br />[*]Click the second entry action that says "Leave a comment on Nexus Mods"
<br />[*]Enter your full Nexus Mods username into the field (check your spelling!)
<br />[/list]
<br />If you forget to leave a comment or don't include a valid username, you'll lose out on your chance to win. If you're not sure what to write as a comment, why don't you tell us about your favourite modding moment of 2018?
<br /><br />We've also updated our [url=https://gog.com/partner/WS18_nxm/?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]Winter Collection over at GOG.com[/url] with the classic Bethesda titles which have been added to the sale!
<br /><br />Good luck and thank you for participating!
<br /><br /><br />[url=http://2nex.us/MBeh30n2EEx][size=5]Click here to enter for your chance to win 1 of 5 Game Codes for a game of your choice from GOG.com[/size][/url]
<br />[i][size=1](Entries close at 16:59 GMT on 30th December 2018 - all prizes must be redeemed by the end of January 2019 or they will expire.)[/size][/i]Just when you thought one giveaway was enough, we've got another one for you this week. 5 more free games of your choice from GOG.com are up for grabs. Now there's a Christmas present you'll definitely like!
Please note that a GOG.com user account is required both for participation, as well as for redeeming the prize.
In order to ensure the winner comes from the Nexus Mods community, there are some mandatory steps to ensure your eligibility.
Leave a comment on this article. You can say anything you want (site rules still apply)
Log into the Gleam widget with your preferred method. (Facebook/Email)
Click the second entry action that says "Leave a comment on Nexus Mods"
Enter your full Nexus Mods username into the field (check your spelling!)
If you forget to leave a comment or don't include a valid username, you'll lose out on your chance to win. If you're not sure what to write as a comment, why don't you tell us about your favourite modding moment of 2018?
We've also updated our Winter Collection over at GOG.com with the classic Bethesda titles which have been added to the sale!
Good luck and thank you for participating!
Click here to enter for your chance to win 1 of 5 Game Codes for a game of your choice from GOG.com
(Entries close at 16:59 GMT on 30th December 2018 - all prizes must be redeemed by the end of January 2019 or they will expire.)Mon, 24 Dec 2018 09:02:04 +0000CompetitionPickysaurushttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13896
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13896780Into battle with LadyAlektoThis week we're catching up with [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/6191338]LadyAlekto[/url], the brains behind the #1 Battletech mod, [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/79]RogueTech[/url]. Currently sitting at over 100,000+ downloads and 1,000+ endorsements.
<br /><br />[b]To begin, could you first tell us a bit about yourself?[/b]
<br /><br />I'm a 33-year-old obsessive nerd that loved Battletech since she found [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BattleTech_novels]the books[/url] as a kid. I pretty much always tinkered with my games and tech. Also certifiable bullhead with a temper, but more than willing to help and assist if respect is there ;)
<br /><br /><br />[b]What sort of things do you like to do when not working on your mod?
<br />[/b]
<br />Usually, I game, mod other things ([url=https://www.nexusmods.com/stellaris]Stellaris[/url] currently), waste time on Discord or Twitch/Netflix, or read comics and books, all the usual nerd stuff. When I can I cycle around the city and into nature for a while, usually with really loud metal shredding what remains of my ears ;)
<br /><br /><br />[b]For those who haven’t heard of RogueTech could you explain what it is?
<br />[/b]
<br />A mod for the game Battletech that aims to introduce everything from lore and create an open-ended sandbox where you pit your tiny company against the whole known universe. The goal is to have a challenging playthrough where you have to use every advantage you can get to survive against the whims of RNGesus, provide an advanced AI that won't just suicide but plays for keeps, a strategic layer that isn't just tacked on but provides more depth like having to actually repair battle damage and the ability to customize your Mechs to the fullest. Also, the ability to actually pick your side, want to play for one of the Great Houses? Pick them and you start on their home planet with mechs that are tied to that faction, or just be another Mercenary on Galatea, starting with a bunch of random mechs and freedom to go as you please. With the online client enabled, you fight in an asynchronous multiplayer against everyone else trying to make their faction take over the whole Inner Sphere.
<br />
<br />[center][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1545227782-713922811.jpeg[/img] [img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1545227764-1254182330.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />[b]How did you first get involved in modding Battletech?[/b]
<br /><br />I was curious what was possible with the game files and then wanted a couple of Inferno SRMs (Short Range Missiles), it all went "downhill" from there, looking to add ever more toys I missed, trying to make a smarter AI and cooperating with the awesome mod community what else could be done.
<br /><br />Then came [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/11789743]Morphyum [/url]along with the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/148]Inner Sphere map[/url] and people started calling the combination of my rebalance and the IS sandbox a RogueLike... now we're here ;)
<br />
<br /><br />[b]You work as part of a small team on the project, can you tell us how each person contributes to the overall mod?
<br />[/b]
<br />Everyone brings their own ideas and vision to the mod. I work on the gear, AI, the majority of mechs, balance and keeping it all together with duct tape and spite.
<br /><br />[url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/11789743]Morphyum[/url]﻿ works mostly on the Simgame DLL files, like salvage improvements, drop cost, variable maintenance and the making the Inner Sphere map work with the online client. He is helped by FrostRaptor to make the server as stable as we can.
<br /><br />[url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/1517510]Cargo_Vroom (aka SrJoben)[/url]﻿ creates new tanks and adds new contracts to the lance generation. They also smooth out many issues both had in the vanilla game.
<br /><br />[url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/28969875]Janxious (aka JoelMeador)[/url]﻿ contributes many small parts to RogueTech such as fall damage, melee improvements and the “weapon realizer” - this allows for many new mechanics not found in the base game. He has also taken over as curator for [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/135]ModTek[/url]﻿ and the BattleTechModLoader, with a RogueTech specific fork to allows us to inject the new factions we’ve created.
<br /><br />[url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/8754251]Tim (aka Guiltyspark34)[/url]﻿ is basically our community guy and the “Keeper of [url=https://roguetech.gamepedia.com/Roguetech_Wiki]the Wiki[/url]﻿”.
<br /><br />Our newest member, GentlePayload has been adding new mech models. Most recently MadCat MKII, Arctic Cheetah and the Bushwacker.
<br /><br />The [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/260]CustomComponent[/url]﻿ is made by [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/938055]Denaden[/url]﻿ and the Mechengineer rewriting to MechLab allow for greater control over how each piece of the mod interacts with the other parts.
<br /><br />[url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/21710174]DonZappo[/url]﻿, who created the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/136]Consolidated Company Commander[/url]﻿ mod also deserves special thanks for sharing his Pilot Quirks and improvements to the Panic System from their Genivler mod. Genivler is a great alternative to those who may find RogueTech too difficult.
<br /><br />Lastly, there is Sheepy, the creator of AIM (a rewrite on how attacks play out and how the combat game GUI works) and Turbine (a performance improver that allows the game engine to load the ~8000 files in RougeTech).
<br /><br />A couple of honourable mentions go to m22Spencer for the performance fixer, SolahmaJoe who was first to figure out how to add models into the game and BloodyDroves - author of Annihilator and Assassin.
<br /><br />Aside from that, we have many contributors on our Discord Server too. They help with proofreading, QA, technical support and figuring out new ways to use the assets in the mod. A few of these people are:
<br /><br /><br />[list]
<br />[*]Arcanan and Alandauren who contributed many DLL and code fixes.
<br />[*]AkodoReign who made many totem mechs and kitbashed additions.
<br />[*]MXMach who keeps coming up with new overpowered toys.
<br />[*]LB who broke their install enough to know how to fix almost any technical issue.
<br />[*]RobertMerlow, GroggyGrognerd and GingerMagician who often stream RogueTech.
<br />[*]Razunter who helped with the installer script.
<br />[*]Cwolf who made the Modders Debug Tool and MissionControl features which we plan to add into the mod.
<br />[/list]
<br />And all our other lovely degenerates who participate. Hopefully, I didn’t miss anyone out! (If I did, just nag at me ;))
<br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1545227775-474408955.jpeg[/img] [img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1545228833-1800351023.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />[b]Have you had any interaction with the developers of Battletech during the development of RogueTech?
<br />[/b]
<br />We have, in general as modders, but the code piece that allows enemy spawns to be based upon factions is actually added by Harebrained Schemes for RogueTech. Especially the HBS team member known as “Eck” helps us to understand a lot of nuances of the game.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]What tools do you use to create your mods?[/b]
<br /><br />I for my part mostly just use Notepad++ for the JSONs and DNSpy to find what I can manipulate through them in the game's code.
<br /><br />Other coders use VisualStudio to write the DLLs for the Harmony injection to change and add the mechanics into the engine.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Have you ever worked on mods for a different game?[/b]
<br /><br />This is the first I actually released, but I've modded my games going all the way back to Doom and always love taking things apart when I can.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Now it’s been available for a few months, what is your opinion of the Donation Points system?
<br />[/b]
<br />I got a pizza out of it, that's nice ;)
<br /><br />[center][youtube]ENlBmHEf-LA[/youtube][/center]
<br />
<br /><br />[b]How do you see the current state of modding across the industry?[/b]
<br />
<br />Depends a lot on the publisher, for me if a game is moddable it is a big reason to consider buying it. I dislike how games get evermore closed down, or even modding being impacted by game updates like it happens with the Fallout 4 Script Extender. Those of us who use and make mods are the most loyal customers, often buying DLC just for a single piece of code to reuse, but instead do some companies try to milk and shut down the art fans create, which is just a shame.
<br /><br />[b]Who is your favourite modder and if you could ask them one question, what would it be?[/b]
<br /><br />That's a tough one since I'm really really bad with names, but I'd ask each of the authors of my fav mods what made them decide to create this specific mod.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Do you have any future plans for your mods you’d like to share?[/b]
<br /><br />I really look forward to when I start rolling out the mission improvements with Cwolf's Mission Control mod, it already is very fun with what it allows us to do.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Do you have any advice for people in the community who might want to start modding Battletech?[/b]
<br /><br />Get yourself Notepad++ and [url=https://dnsspy.io/]DNS Spy[/url], use jsoncompare.com to find errors, embrace the output log and prepare to break it more often than have it work. If you are interested in getting yourself into harmony patching, read that wiki and be even more prepared to be driven crazy. But for all that is possible, the modding community is just wholesome and awesome, everyone will help when they know something.
<br /><br /><br />[line]
<br />A big thank you to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/users/6191338]LadyAlekto[/url] for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597][b]BigBizkit[/b][/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975][b]Pickysaurus[/b][/url]. This week we're catching up with LadyAlekto, the brains behind the #1 Battletech mod, RogueTech. Currently sitting at over 100,000+ downloads and 1,000+ endorsements.
To begin, could you first tell us a bit about yourself?
I'm a 33-year-old obsessive nerd that loved Battletech since she found the books as a kid. I pretty much always tinkered with my games and tech. Also certifiable bullhead with a temper, but more than willing to help and assist if respect is there ;)
What sort of things do you like to do when not working on your mod?
Usually, I game, mod other things (Stellaris currently), waste time on Discord or Twitch/Netflix, or read comics and books, all the usual nerd stuff. When I can I cycle around the city and into nature for a while, usually with really loud metal shredding what remains of my ears ;)
For those who haven’t heard of RogueTech could you explain what it is?
A mod for the game Battletech that aims to introduce everything from lore and create an open-ended sandbox where you pit your tiny company against the whole known universe. The goal is to have a challenging playthrough where you have to use every advantage you can get to survive against the whims of RNGesus, provide an advanced AI that won't just suicide but plays for keeps, a strategic layer that isn't just tacked on but provides more depth like having to actually repair battle damage and the ability to customize your Mechs to the fullest. Also, the ability to actually pick your side, want to play for one of the Great Houses? Pick them and you start on their home planet with mechs that are tied to that faction, or just be another Mercenary on Galatea, starting with a bunch of random mechs and freedom to go as you please. With the online client enabled, you fight in an asynchronous multiplayer against everyone else trying to make their faction take over the whole Inner Sphere.
How did you first get involved in modding Battletech?
I was curious what was possible with the game files and then wanted a couple of Inferno SRMs (Short Range Missiles), it all went "downhill" from there, looking to add ever more toys I missed, trying to make a smarter AI and cooperating with the awesome mod community what else could be done.
Then came Morphyum along with the Inner Sphere map and people started calling the combination of my rebalance and the IS sandbox a RogueLike... now we're here ;)
You work as part of a small team on the project, can you tell us how each person contributes to the overall mod?
Everyone brings their own ideas and vision to the mod. I work on the gear, AI, the majority of mechs, balance and keeping it all together with duct tape and spite.
Morphyum﻿ works mostly on the Simgame DLL files, like salvage improvements, drop cost, variable maintenance and the making the Inner Sphere map work with the online client. He is helped by FrostRaptor to make the server as stable as we can.
Cargo_Vroom (aka SrJoben)﻿ creates new tanks and adds new contracts to the lance generation. They also smooth out many issues both had in the vanilla game.
Janxious (aka JoelMeador)﻿ contributes many small parts to RogueTech such as fall damage, melee improvements and the “weapon realizer” - this allows for many new mechanics not found in the base game. He has also taken over as curator for ModTek﻿ and the BattleTechModLoader, with a RogueTech specific fork to allows us to inject the new factions we’ve created.
Tim (aka Guiltyspark34)﻿ is basically our community guy and the “Keeper of the Wiki﻿”.
Our newest member, GentlePayload has been adding new mech models. Most recently MadCat MKII, Arctic Cheetah and the Bushwacker.
The CustomComponent﻿ is made by Denaden﻿ and the Mechengineer rewriting to MechLab allow for greater control over how each piece of the mod interacts with the other parts.
DonZappo﻿, who created the Consolidated Company Commander﻿ mod also deserves special thanks for sharing his Pilot Quirks and improvements to the Panic System from their Genivler mod. Genivler is a great alternative to those who may find RogueTech too difficult.
Lastly, there is Sheepy, the creator of AIM (a rewrite on how attacks play out and how the combat game GUI works) and Turbine (a performance improver that allows the game engine to load the ~8000 files in RougeTech).
A couple of honourable mentions go to m22Spencer for the performance fixer, SolahmaJoe who was first to figure out how to add models into the game and BloodyDroves - author of Annihilator and Assassin.
Aside from that, we have many contributors on our Discord Server too. They help with proofreading, QA, technical support and figuring out new ways to use the assets in the mod. A few of these people are:
Arcanan and Alandauren who contributed many DLL and code fixes.
AkodoReign who made many totem mechs and kitbashed additions.
MXMach who keeps coming up with new overpowered toys.
LB who broke their install enough to know how to fix almost any technical issue.
RobertMerlow, GroggyGrognerd and GingerMagician who often stream RogueTech.
Razunter who helped with the installer script.
Cwolf who made the Modders Debug Tool and MissionControl features which we plan to add into the mod.
And all our other lovely degenerates who participate. Hopefully, I didn’t miss anyone out! (If I did, just nag at me ;))
Have you had any interaction with the developers of Battletech during the development of RogueTech?
We have, in general as modders, but the code piece that allows enemy spawns to be based upon factions is actually added by Harebrained Schemes for RogueTech. Especially the HBS team member known as “Eck” helps us to understand a lot of nuances of the game.
What tools do you use to create your mods?
I for my part mostly just use Notepad++ for the JSONs and DNSpy to find what I can manipulate through them in the game's code.
Other coders use VisualStudio to write the DLLs for the Harmony injection to change and add the mechanics into the engine.
Have you ever worked on mods for a different game?
This is the first I actually released, but I've modded my games going all the way back to Doom and always love taking things apart when I can.
Now it’s been available for a few months, what is your opinion of the Donation Points system?
I got a pizza out of it, that's nice ;)
ENlBmHEf-LA
How do you see the current state of modding across the industry?
Depends a lot on the publisher, for me if a game is moddable it is a big reason to consider buying it. I dislike how games get evermore closed down, or even modding being impacted by game updates like it happens with the Fallout 4 Script Extender. Those of us who use and make mods are the most loyal customers, often buying DLC just for a single piece of code to reuse, but instead do some companies try to milk and shut down the art fans create, which is just a shame.
Who is your favourite modder and if you could ask them one question, what would it be?
That's a tough one since I'm really really bad with names, but I'd ask each of the authors of my fav mods what made them decide to create this specific mod.
Do you have any future plans for your mods you’d like to share?
I really look forward to when I start rolling out the mission improvements with Cwolf's Mission Control mod, it already is very fun with what it allows us to do.
Do you have any advice for people in the community who might want to start modding Battletech?
Get yourself Notepad++ and DNS Spy, use jsoncompare.com to find errors, embrace the output log and prepare to break it more often than have it work. If you are interested in getting yourself into harmony patching, read that wiki and be even more prepared to be driven crazy. But for all that is possible, the modding community is just wholesome and awesome, everyone will help when they know something.
A big thank you to LadyAlekto for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to BigBizkit or Pickysaurus. Fri, 21 Dec 2018 11:29:27 +0000InterviewsPickysaurushttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13871
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/1387115Nexus Mods/GOG Giveaway - Winner's Choice!Good news, everyone! [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/news/13881]As we mentioned the other day[/url], GOG's Winter Sale is here with some amazing discounts and if you like the idea of games for cheap, you will love the idea of games for free!
<br /><br />That's right. Thanks to our friends at [url=https://www.gog.com/?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com[/url] we are giving away [b]5 GOG keys for a game of your choice[/b] valid for any game that is available on GOG (regardless of whether it is on sale or not).
<br /><br />Please note that a [b][url=https://login.gog.com/login?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com user account is required[/url][/b] both for participation, as well as for redeeming the prize.
<br /><br />In order to ensure the winner comes from the Nexus Mods community, there are some mandatory steps to ensure your eligibility.
<br /><br />[list]
<br />[*]Leave a comment on this article. You can say anything you want (site rules still apply)
<br />[*]Log into the Gleam widget with your preferred method. (Facebook/Email)
<br />[*]Click the second entry action that says "Leave a comment on Nexus Mods"
<br />[*]Enter your full Nexus Mods username into the field (check your spelling!)
<br />[/list]
<br />If you forget to leave a comment or don't include a valid username, you'll lose out on your chance to win. If you are not sure what to write as a comment, why don't you tell us about your favourite holiday tradition?
<br /><br />Good luck and thank you for participating!
<br /><br /><br />[url=http://2nex.us/MFGK30mXw36][size=5][s]Click here to enter for your chance to win 1 of 5 Game Codes for a game of your choice from GOG.com[/s][/size][/url]
<br />[i][size=1](Entries close at 16:59 GMT on 23rd December 2018 - all prizes must be redeemed by the end of January 2019 or they will expire.)
<br /><br />[/size][/i]Winners:
<br />[spoiler]
<br />Akimanki
<br />Dacaru
<br />theskymoves
<br />devilmanz
<br />zmokey
<br />[/spoiler]Good news, everyone! As we mentioned the other day, GOG's Winter Sale is here with some amazing discounts and if you like the idea of games for cheap, you will love the idea of games for free!
That's right. Thanks to our friends at GOG.com we are giving away 5 GOG keys for a game of your choice valid for any game that is available on GOG (regardless of whether it is on sale or not).
Please note that a GOG.com user account is required both for participation, as well as for redeeming the prize.
In order to ensure the winner comes from the Nexus Mods community, there are some mandatory steps to ensure your eligibility.
Leave a comment on this article. You can say anything you want (site rules still apply)
Log into the Gleam widget with your preferred method. (Facebook/Email)
Click the second entry action that says "Leave a comment on Nexus Mods"
Enter your full Nexus Mods username into the field (check your spelling!)
If you forget to leave a comment or don't include a valid username, you'll lose out on your chance to win. If you are not sure what to write as a comment, why don't you tell us about your favourite holiday tradition?
Good luck and thank you for participating!
Click here to enter for your chance to win 1 of 5 Game Codes for a game of your choice from GOG.com
(Entries close at 16:59 GMT on 23rd December 2018 - all prizes must be redeemed by the end of January 2019 or they will expire.)
Winners:
Akimanki
Dacaru
theskymoves
devilmanz
zmokey
Mon, 17 Dec 2018 09:04:19 +0000CompetitionBigBizkithttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13891
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/138911119A whole new Monster Hunter World - MHVuzeEver since [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld]Monster Hunter World[/url] released on PC in August of this year, we have been very proud to host the modding community for one of Capcom's most popular games of all time. In the few months that Monster Hunter World has had a home at Nexus Mods, we have seen a massive surge of mods created by our community. We are, therefore, very excited to talk to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/users/3913354?tab=user+files]MHVuze[/url] today - one of the modding pioneers for Monster Hunter World who has contributed various tools and quality of life mods for our community.
<br /><br /><br />[b]BigBizkit: Thanks, MHVuze, for taking the time to answer our questions. Many modders of Monster Hunter World will know your creations, but could you tell us a bit about yourself first to start this off?[/b]
<br />
<br />MHVuze: Thanks for having me! I'm a 24-year-old from Germany working in law. I've always had an affection for tuning games to my liking and one of the first games I can remember modding is SpellForce 2. If I recall correctly, it had an official Editor / Mod Kit which is something I wish more game developers offered in this day and age.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]How would you describe the kind of mods you like to create for Monster Hunter World?[/b]
<br />
<br />I would consider the majority of them QoL-improvements and temporary workarounds for game issues such as the texture loading or (now fixed) effect stuttering. I also released and open-sourced [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/6]WorldChunkTool[/url] which allows interested users to unpack the game data files and take a peek at them, as well as [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/18]WorldProcessTool[/url] which allows users to pause and resume the game - features that are unfortunately missing in the vanilla game despite being present in other titles of the series.
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1544009182-288921319.jpeg[/img]﻿ [img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1544009330-1030368534.png[/img]﻿[/center]
<br />[b]Ever since launch, the modding community for Monster Hunter World has grown rapidly. Why do you think has the game been so successful both with players and mod creators and what sets it apart from other games in your view?[/b]
<br />
<br />First of all: I'm super happy to see the community thriving on PC. The success of the game itself on PC (and console, too) has gone well beyond my expectations. Same goes for the modding community: I'm excited to see a working 3D model conversion tool and a lot of quality projects by the modders in general.
<br /><br />As you might know, this is the first time ever a mainline entry of the Monster Hunter series has made it to the PC platform. The games have always had some weird design choices in the past when it came to a select few aspects and while Monster Hunter World is an incredible improvement in that regard over the older games, there are still some portions that a lot of players would like to experience differently. The by default lacking multiplayer gathering hub serves as a great example of things we modders can improve upon in the PC version.
<br /><br />That combined with a relatively low barrier of entry, all things considered, has certainly helped to get people interested in modding the game.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]You were one of the first mod authors to jump on creating content for Monster Hunter World. What is it that draws you towards the game and what made you want to mod it?[/b]
<br />
<br />As pointed out above, this was the first time a mainline Monster Hunter game made it to PC, so I was excited to finally have a title that could be tinkered with without the drawbacks of a console (repacking, resigning, long loading times etc).
<br />
<br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1544010541-850194555.png[/img]﻿ [img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1544010549-1022485843.png[/img]﻿[/center]
<br />[b]How did you first learn about how to mod Monster Hunter World? Do you have any tips for people who want to get involved with modding?[/b]
<br />
<br />I've been a big fan of the game ever since a friend introduced me to Monster Hunter Freedom on the PlayStation Portable in 2006 - it has been the platform seller for me personally. Unfortunately, the series had a hard time catching on in the west and as such, there were severe delays when it came to the localization of the titles (a bunch did never make it over here at all!).
<br /><br />Stumbling across English fan translations, I decided to research how they are done and one thing kinda led to another. Ever since that point I've been dissecting the game files (alongside and with the assistance of some other smart minds, of course). Monster Hunter World was just the natural continuation of that but in fact, I have briefly looked at the PlayStation 4 version before the title was released on PC to get a first look - which absolutely paid off.
<br /><br />Dedication and willingness to learn new things are definitely key for those looking to get started. Things will eventually start falling into place and you will start to recognize patterns quickly the more time you spend investigating file formats and the like.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Which creation of yours are you most proud of and do you have a favourite Monster Hunter World mod from a different creator?[/b]
<br />
<br />I honestly don't have any creation that I'm most "proud" of but I am quite happy that WorldChunkTool got the modding scene for Monster Hunter World rolling so quickly after launch.
<br /><br />As a dog guy, I absolutely adore the somewhat proof-of-concept mod [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/378]Canine Palico by UberGrainy[/url] - I just wish it gained more traction and people adopted the armor sets and sounds for the changed appearance.
<br /><br />But it's still early days and it's very cute as is!
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1544008867-216961771.jpeg[/img]﻿[/center]
<br />The [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/261]app launcher by HelloWorld[/url] is also of great use to me. I combine it with the aforementioned [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/18]WorldProcessTool[/url] for example.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]What would you like to see in the near future in terms of mods for Monster Hunter World, and maybe even in terms of DLC?[/b]
<br />
<br />Adding completely new monsters, equipment and quests is the end goal in my opinion. For now, all mods in those categories are basically just replacing existing used or unused spots left by Capcom. Unfortunately, the game has a lot of stuff hard-coded as well as some sanity checks and so far the modding community is constrained by all of that.
<br /><br />Another point is transferring save data from the PlayStation 4 version of the game. That hinges on a more recent version of the PS4 firmware being exploited though and is likely well beyond the control of anyone reading this. I just hope it will be possible soon (with the PS4 version having launched in early 2018, I have my main character on there)!
<br /><br />As for official DLC, I am hoping for a G-Rank expansion in 2019. For those unfamiliar, it will add another rank of difficulty with harder quests, new monsters - thereby equip - and areas.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]What other games do you like to mod? Have you tried your hand at creating mods for other games?[/b]
<br />
<br />Currently, I'm working on dissecting a so far seemingly untouched game of the Monster Hunter franchise. I don't really intend to mod it but am mainly interested in acquiring the assets that are exclusive to it so they could be used in Monster Hunter World, for example.
<br /><br />I did create some (personal use) mods for Spellforce - as I pointed out above - as well as The Sims 2 and a few other Monster Hunter games. I also tinkered a bit with God Eater and helped to create the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/108]Japanese Voice-Over Dub[/url] for the PC version of Dragon's Dogma which can also be found over here on Nexus Mods.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]What other hobbies do you have outside of gaming and/or modding?[/b]
<br />
<br />I love languages and have started learning Mandarin just three weeks ago, so that has been taking up a lot of my time recently. The rest of my limited free time is spent taking care of our pets, doing a little fitness and watching documentaries or shows.
<br />
<br /><br />[b]Would you like to say anything to our wider Nexus Mods Community?[/b]
<br />
<br />Thanks for all the positive and civil feedback as well as the generosity expressed by a bunch of community members! Nexus Mods really is a great platform with talented creators and supportive users, so I am proud I could make a little impact in the Monster Hunter World portion of it.
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1544008861-1491777492.jpeg[/img]﻿[/center]
<br />[line]
<br />A big thank you to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/users/3913354?tab=user+files]MHVuze[/url] for answering our questions. As always, if there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597][b]BigBizkit[/b][/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975][b]Pickysaurus[/b][/url]. Ever since Monster Hunter World released on PC in August of this year, we have been very proud to host the modding community for one of Capcom's most popular games of all time. In the few months that Monster Hunter World has had a home at Nexus Mods, we have seen a massive surge of mods created by our community. We are, therefore, very excited to talk to MHVuze today - one of the modding pioneers for Monster Hunter World who has contributed various tools and quality of life mods for our community.
BigBizkit: Thanks, MHVuze, for taking the time to answer our questions. Many modders of Monster Hunter World will know your creations, but could you tell us a bit about yourself first to start this off?
MHVuze: Thanks for having me! I'm a 24-year-old from Germany working in law. I've always had an affection for tuning games to my liking and one of the first games I can remember modding is SpellForce 2. If I recall correctly, it had an official Editor / Mod Kit which is something I wish more game developers offered in this day and age.
How would you describe the kind of mods you like to create for Monster Hunter World?
I would consider the majority of them QoL-improvements and temporary workarounds for game issues such as the texture loading or (now fixed) effect stuttering. I also released and open-sourced WorldChunkTool which allows interested users to unpack the game data files and take a peek at them, as well as WorldProcessTool which allows users to pause and resume the game - features that are unfortunately missing in the vanilla game despite being present in other titles of the series.
﻿ ﻿
Ever since launch, the modding community for Monster Hunter World has grown rapidly. Why do you think has the game been so successful both with players and mod creators and what sets it apart from other games in your view?
First of all: I'm super happy to see the community thriving on PC. The success of the game itself on PC (and console, too) has gone well beyond my expectations. Same goes for the modding community: I'm excited to see a working 3D model conversion tool and a lot of quality projects by the modders in general.
As you might know, this is the first time ever a mainline entry of the Monster Hunter series has made it to the PC platform. The games have always had some weird design choices in the past when it came to a select few aspects and while Monster Hunter World is an incredible improvement in that regard over the older games, there are still some portions that a lot of players would like to experience differently. The by default lacking multiplayer gathering hub serves as a great example of things we modders can improve upon in the PC version.
That combined with a relatively low barrier of entry, all things considered, has certainly helped to get people interested in modding the game.
You were one of the first mod authors to jump on creating content for Monster Hunter World. What is it that draws you towards the game and what made you want to mod it?
As pointed out above, this was the first time a mainline Monster Hunter game made it to PC, so I was excited to finally have a title that could be tinkered with without the drawbacks of a console (repacking, resigning, long loading times etc).
﻿ ﻿
How did you first learn about how to mod Monster Hunter World? Do you have any tips for people who want to get involved with modding?
I've been a big fan of the game ever since a friend introduced me to Monster Hunter Freedom on the PlayStation Portable in 2006 - it has been the platform seller for me personally. Unfortunately, the series had a hard time catching on in the west and as such, there were severe delays when it came to the localization of the titles (a bunch did never make it over here at all!).
Stumbling across English fan translations, I decided to research how they are done and one thing kinda led to another. Ever since that point I've been dissecting the game files (alongside and with the assistance of some other smart minds, of course). Monster Hunter World was just the natural continuation of that but in fact, I have briefly looked at the PlayStation 4 version before the title was released on PC to get a first look - which absolutely paid off.
Dedication and willingness to learn new things are definitely key for those looking to get started. Things will eventually start falling into place and you will start to recognize patterns quickly the more time you spend investigating file formats and the like.
Which creation of yours are you most proud of and do you have a favourite Monster Hunter World mod from a different creator?
I honestly don't have any creation that I'm most "proud" of but I am quite happy that WorldChunkTool got the modding scene for Monster Hunter World rolling so quickly after launch.
As a dog guy, I absolutely adore the somewhat proof-of-concept mod Canine Palico by UberGrainy - I just wish it gained more traction and people adopted the armor sets and sounds for the changed appearance.
But it's still early days and it's very cute as is!
﻿
The app launcher by HelloWorld is also of great use to me. I combine it with the aforementioned WorldProcessTool for example.
What would you like to see in the near future in terms of mods for Monster Hunter World, and maybe even in terms of DLC?
Adding completely new monsters, equipment and quests is the end goal in my opinion. For now, all mods in those categories are basically just replacing existing used or unused spots left by Capcom. Unfortunately, the game has a lot of stuff hard-coded as well as some sanity checks and so far the modding community is constrained by all of that.
Another point is transferring save data from the PlayStation 4 version of the game. That hinges on a more recent version of the PS4 firmware being exploited though and is likely well beyond the control of anyone reading this. I just hope it will be possible soon (with the PS4 version having launched in early 2018, I have my main character on there)!
As for official DLC, I am hoping for a G-Rank expansion in 2019. For those unfamiliar, it will add another rank of difficulty with harder quests, new monsters - thereby equip - and areas.
What other games do you like to mod? Have you tried your hand at creating mods for other games?
Currently, I'm working on dissecting a so far seemingly untouched game of the Monster Hunter franchise. I don't really intend to mod it but am mainly interested in acquiring the assets that are exclusive to it so they could be used in Monster Hunter World, for example.
I did create some (personal use) mods for Spellforce - as I pointed out above - as well as The Sims 2 and a few other Monster Hunter games. I also tinkered a bit with God Eater and helped to create the Japanese Voice-Over Dub for the PC version of Dragon's Dogma which can also be found over here on Nexus Mods.
What other hobbies do you have outside of gaming and/or modding?
I love languages and have started learning Mandarin just three weeks ago, so that has been taking up a lot of my time recently. The rest of my limited free time is spent taking care of our pets, doing a little fitness and watching documentaries or shows.
Would you like to say anything to our wider Nexus Mods Community?
Thanks for all the positive and civil feedback as well as the generosity expressed by a bunch of community members! Nexus Mods really is a great platform with talented creators and supportive users, so I am proud I could make a little impact in the Monster Hunter World portion of it.
﻿
A big thank you to MHVuze for answering our questions. As always, if there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to BigBizkit or Pickysaurus. Fri, 14 Dec 2018 10:27:17 +0000InterviewsBigBizkithttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13876
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/138765Pick up a deal in the GOG Winter Sale!The [url=https://gog.com?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG.com[/url] Winter Sale has begun! With great deals on over 1500 games over the next 3 weeks.
<br /><br />Almost every game on GOG's website will be on offer during the event with special Daily Deals featuring 8 different games per day. If you've been looking to dive into [url=https://www.gog.com/game/kingdom_come_deliverance?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]Kingdom Come: Deliverance[/url], [url=https://www.gog.com/game/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]The Witcher 3[/url] or [url=https://www.gog.com/game/battletech_digital_deluxe_edition?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]Battletech[/url] there's no time like the present.
<br /><br />[center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544626039-2059297149.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />Check out the [url=https://gog.com/partner/WS18_nxm/?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]Nexus Mods Winter Collection[/url] for our favourite moddable games offered in the deals. If you make a purchase by following one of the links on this page, you'll be supporting our site as Nexus Mods gets a kickback for every purchase - at no extra cost to you! Be sure to keep your eyes peeled as we'll be updating the collection during the sale too.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Free Stuff
<br />[/b]
<br />Just purchasing a game will earn you a free copy of [url=https://www.gog.com/game/fantasy_general?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]Fantasy General[/url] and if you spend over $15 (~£12) you'll get [url=https://www.gog.com/game/everspace?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]EVERSPACE[/url] too.
<br /><br />You can also pick up a free copy of [url=https://www.gog.com/game/full_throttle_remastered?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]Full Throttled Remastered right here[/url]﻿ (valid for 48hours from the launch of the promotion).
<br /><br /><br />[b]More Free Stuff
<br />[/b]
<br />[url=https://www.gog.com/connect?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_source=nxm&amp;utm_campaign=ws18&amp;utm_term=en]GOG Connect[/url] is back too, letting you get DRM free versions of games you've already purchased on Steam with a different batch of titles to import each week. Just log in and link your Steam and GOG accounts.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Even More Free Stuff
<br />[/b]
<br />And it gets better... Thanks to our friends at GOG.com we'll be doing some special giveaways over the holiday period where you can win your choice of ANY game from GOG.com.
<br /><br />So keep an eye on our [url=https://facebook.com/nexussites/]Facebook[/url], [url=https://twitter.com/nexussites]Twitter[/url] and site news so you don't miss out!The GOG.com Winter Sale has begun! With great deals on over 1500 games over the next 3 weeks.
Almost every game on GOG's website will be on offer during the event with special Daily Deals featuring 8 different games per day. If you've been looking to dive into Kingdom Come: Deliverance, The Witcher 3 or Battletech there's no time like the present.
Check out the Nexus Mods Winter Collection for our favourite moddable games offered in the deals. If you make a purchase by following one of the links on this page, you'll be supporting our site as Nexus Mods gets a kickback for every purchase - at no extra cost to you! Be sure to keep your eyes peeled as we'll be updating the collection during the sale too.
Free Stuff
Just purchasing a game will earn you a free copy of Fantasy General and if you spend over $15 (~£12) you'll get EVERSPACE too.
You can also pick up a free copy of Full Throttled Remastered right here﻿ (valid for 48hours from the launch of the promotion).
More Free Stuff
GOG Connect is back too, letting you get DRM free versions of games you've already purchased on Steam with a different batch of titles to import each week. Just log in and link your Steam and GOG accounts.
Even More Free Stuff
And it gets better... Thanks to our friends at GOG.com we'll be doing some special giveaways over the holiday period where you can win your choice of ANY game from GOG.com.
So keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter and site news so you don't miss out!Thu, 13 Dec 2018 14:14:05 +0000FeaturePickysaurushttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13881
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/138815What does the DarkFox say?Today’s guest is [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/4672007]DarkFox127[/url], known for his YouTube series on the Creation Kit and as the man behind [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4269]Caranthir Tower Reborn[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20982]Riverside Shack - Buildable Player Home[/url].
<br /><br />[b]Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. For those in the community who don’t know you, could you tell us a little about yourself?[/b]
<br /><br />My name’s Richard aka Darkfox127 and I’ve been creating mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim since its release back in 2011. Shortly after spending some time in the Creation Kit and grasping the basics, I took to creating tutorial videos on [url=https://www.youtube.com/user/DARKF0X127]YouTube[/url] which got me a reputation in the modding community. Many people now describe me as the “go to guy” for learning how to use the Creation Kit, although I’m far from an expert.
<br /><br />In addition to my tutorial videos, I’ve released a variety of mods (mostly player homes) which have been successful over the years including [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4269]Caranthir Tower[/url], [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57141]Mörskom Estate[/url], [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20982]Riverside Shack[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/4672007?tab=user+files]more[/url]. I’m also a strong believer in sharing resources whenever possible and working with others to make great content. I continue working on projects to this day and regularly stream the development process on both [url=https://www.twitch.tv/darkfox127]Twitch[/url] and YouTube.
<br /><br /><br />[b]How did you first get into modding games?[/b]
<br /><br />Believe it or not, my first taste of content creation for video games was many years ago back in the days of Timesplitters 2. It was in a way modding, at least for the limitations of games consoles. I would create new multiplayer maps to play with friends or against bots. I even utilized the mission creation tools using triggered events and wrote my own little stories. I was in fact a console gamer for the better part of 20 years before coming across to the PC just prior to the release of Skyrim.
<br /><br />Other games I began to experiment with included the Far Cry series which had an amazing in-game map editor, again on the console. I would spend hours making multiplayer maps and uploading them online in the hopes that others would join me in playing them. I did on occasion build a large lobby of people to face off against each other which was great fun.
<br /><br />It would be accurate to say that I’ve always had an itch for creating things, even if it was on an old console with limited functionality. This eventually led to me purchasing my first PC which barely had enough power to load the web browser until I eventually saved up the money and bought a gaming rig, along with a copy of Skyrim.
<br /><br />I had barely left Riverwood when I discovered that there were professional-level developer tools available for the game which would allow me to take my creativity to a whole new level and scratch that itch once again. The downside is that due to spending thousands of hours in the Creation Kit, I have still to this day not finished the base game.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Your two most popular mods are Caranthir Tower Reborn and Morskom Estate. The latter of which is a collaboration with Elianora. What was it like working on a project alongside one of the best house mod makers for Skyrim?[/b]
<br /><br />I honestly very rarely work alongside other mod authors, despite having done a couple of projects in the past with one or two. When I started chatting with [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/3231858]Elianora[/url]world space and checked out her mods, I realised that we each had the perfect ingredients to create something which was truly unique, if not a little too crazy.
<br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544014384-764842121.jpeg[/img] [img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544014394-6873021.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />At first, I thought that it might be a little chaotic sending files back and forth, but it ended up being fairly straightforward. We spoke almost every day and dropped ideas back and forth constantly. Eli’s ability to create amazing interiors and my knack for scripting and general implementation worked well.
<br /><br />She’s a super friendly person with some great talent and we both helped support each other throughout the development of the mod and we just gelled well. It was a pleasure to work on something which became so popular with a large number of people.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Which parts of the mod did you each create?[/b]
<br /><br />After we both sat down and talked about having a winter home with all these cool immersive features, Elianora ran off and created the base structure out of nowhere. When she sent it back to me, my mind went insane and we both started springing more ideas up to the surface. From that point on, Elianora would go on to clutter the house and I worked on adding all the scripting madness into the mod. We passed the mod back and forth over time and eventually, we had a finished house mod.
<br /><br />It contained all the cluttering goodness of an Elianora home and all the insane features typical of my own house mods. I took on the additional roles of publishing the mod and writing the full walkthrough guide. We both took the time to test out the mod on our own systems and Elianora used her PC for doing the screenshots, given that she always picked out the best ENBs and her game always looks amazing. Although in the end the mod ideally required a mid-range to high-end PC to prevent all the crashes as we hit the limits of the Creation Kit’s capabilities to the point we can’t even mod it anymore, it turned out to be a successful mod regardless and I think I we are both proud of Mörskom Estate.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Caranthir Tower Reborn is a huge player home and quest mod. Can you describe your process for designing and building this mod? [/b]
<br /><br />I’ve been asked this on stream before and it’s actually a tough one. Although I consider myself a very organised person, I never really have much of a plan when it comes to developing a mod. I get an idea, I dump some items in the render window and I see what comes of it. That’s oddly enough the way most of my projects start. Some may not be aware of this, but Caranthir Tower was originally going to be called Asires’s Tower. It started out as a square room filled with junk and a teleport which led to a random world space covered in ice. None of the story really existed and there was no logic to anything I was building. Since the very beginning though, I had this vision of a tower high up in the mountains. When I eventually made the decision to pick the project back up, I renamed it Caranthir Tower after a quick name generator search on Google. I know, not what people would expect but that’s how the name came about. I then started messing around with the largest tileset I could find because large obviously translates into epic.
<br /><br />[center][youtube]VRTJltc9h1c[/youtube][/center]
<br /><br />After many months, I had created a cool wizards tower high up in the mountains and people loved it. It was my first hit in the modding community which I’m extremely proud of, but then came the long road of taking what I had built and slowly turning it into something bigger, better and more ambitious. I decided to take the mod and recreate it from scratch. It eventually came to be known as Caranthir Tower Reborn and this time around it was bigger, better thought out and I pretty much just came up with ideas as I went. Eventually though, I finally stopped adding new features and released the mod.
<br /><br />With all that said, my development process for my mods has improved dramatically over the years. Although I still start with some basic ideas and roll with whatever I have, I take the time to plan out more. Each one of my projects now has a Trello board filled with ideas, not only from myself but from friends and other members of the community. I make sure that everything in the mod has its place and makes sense within the lore. When it comes down to which section to work on and when I find it is best to bounce around different aspects of development to keep things fresh. Sitting there and scripting thousands of lines of Papyrus really can get a little dull after a while, as can Navmeshing entire sections of a mod. So jumping around different tasks really helps to keep things interesting and prevents burnout.
<br /><br /><br />[b]How long did it take to complete?[/b]
<br /><br />A wizard’s work is never complete. Just kidding, although there is some truth to that regarding Caranthir Tower right now. The mod must have taken me the better part of three years on and off. There would be spells where I would be working on other projects or taking a break from modding. To this day, I still have ideas and plans for Caranthir Tower and I’ll continue to work on some of my larger projects for as long as they are fun to mod.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Are there any features you’re especially proud of?
<br />[/b]
<br />I think the biggest feature and the most tricky to have managed a workaround for was the rising of the tower itself. It turns out that the Creation Engine doesn’t like moving objects via scripting if there are too large. It took me four hours to figure out why my tower wouldn’t move and I eventually came up with a workaround by setting the scale down and changing it midway through the translation of the mesh. I wasn’t going to let the Creation Kit beat me on this one.
<br /><br />[center][youtube]-Jh-aVlCfuI[/youtube][/center]
<br /><br />Another feature which required a bit of workaround was the portal system for the tower. Getting the player to activate a teleport and select from a number of locations was easy but how would an NPC know how to navigate a message box? The answer is that they can’t. My solution was to place just out of reach doors behind the walls of the tower which NPCs can use to access every section of the structure. If you load up CTR in the CK, you can see the crazy link of portals throughout the cells that the NPCs will use the get around. Fun fact, they all go through the Lobby to get to their destination.
<br /><br /><br />[b]You devote a lot of time to creating video tutorials for Creation Kit on your YouTube channel. What inspired you to share your knowledge this way?[/b]
<br /><br />As mentioned briefly earlier, I’m a strong believer in sharing knowledge and resources within the community. I started out with the Creation Kit watching the official Bethesda tutorials and eventually seeing some videos from other YouTubers like BestInSlot. When I continued to tear apart everything in the Creation Kit to see how things worked and began experimenting myself, I felt that as good as some of the tutorials out there were, I could fill in some of the blanks and offer further advice from my own experiences. I grabbed my old Xbox Original headset which was falling apart and found some free software to start recording my desktop.
<br /><br />[center][youtube]u5EmFVRRAzk[/youtube][/center]
<br /><br />I started low down the YouTube food chain, but at least I wasn’t using notepad to explain how to do things. Before I knew it, I had a following of people all watching my tutorials and I just kept sharing what I would learn. I think I’ve always enjoyed helping others out and explaining how to do things in as simple a way possible, so YouTube and the Creation Kit let me scratch another itch.
<br /><br /><br />[b]What are your opinions on the Creation Kit?[/b]
<br /><br />As much as I may have joked and slandered elements of the Creation Kit before, at the end of the day, it’s an amazing tool which gives us access to the amazing worlds that Bethesda create and allows us to create our own stories within the game. Sure the tool has its downfalls and limitations, especially when you take a look at some of the more modern tools available for video game development, but this allows you to tap directly into Bethesda games which is something few developers give you so much control over.
<br /><br />If you’re willing to take the time to learn how to use the Creation Kit, it opens up an entirely new realm of possibilities to explore and working with the CK has given me some transferable skills I’ve been able to take with me in a professional working environment.
<br /><br /><br />[b]How do you see the current state of modding?[/b]
<br /><br />With the release of Skyrim Special Edition and the VR experience, modding for Skyrim has bounced back a little. Now that people are able to convert the majority of mods from legacy across to SE, they can take full advantage of the slightly more up to date graphics and the 64-bit engine. There are still a good amount of people out there modding the game and downloading the new content which continues to be released by modders on a daily basis. Skyrim modding has certainly had stronger days but even the older Elder Scrolls titles are still seeing amazing mod releases and people are still playing those games. They’ve held on for many years and so will Skyrim.
<br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544019654-1673582107.jpeg[/img] [img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544019675-50546444.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />I feel that Fallout 4 modding has kicked off in a big way too, although I myself was never drawn into the latest title of the series (not counting Fallout 76). Fallout 4 has seen a lot of modders move on from Skyrim which is to be expected but the modding community will always remain strong for The Elder Scrolls franchise. I also don’t believe that the introduction of the Creation Club will have any impact on modding of Bethesda games as they know the importance of mods and they highly value their community. I think for as long as they have the capability, Bethesda will always make room for people to make their own additions to the game through the use of the Creation Kit.
<br /><br /><br />[b]You’ve dabbled in modding Fallout games with Combustible Oil Lamps. Are you planning to create more content for the Fallout series?
<br />[/b]
<br />Creating the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/32923]Combustible Oil Lamps[/url] mod was a short and fun project, however, the game never really pulled me in the same way that previous Fallout games did back during my console years. I may one day give Fallout 4 another shot (pun intended) and see where the experience takes me. I don’t have any immediate plans to mod the game, but it’s not off the table.
<br /><br /><br />[b]What do you think of Fallout 76 and would you be interested in modding it?[/b]
<br /><br />Fallout 76 looks to be a very different experience from what fans of the series have come to expect. I’ve never been very big on MMOs as I’ve never got the time to grind my way through those types of game, as a result, they don’t tend to hold my interest. It’s unlikely that I would grab a copy of Fallout 76, especially given the recent controversy surrounding it.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Do you still play the games you make mods for?
<br />[/b]
<br />Does diving into the game through the console and testing count? As mentioned previously, I never actually completed Skyrim. I did get through the main story and The College of Winterhold, along with the Dawnguard DLC but I still have not played the Dragonborn DLC. To my defence though, simsim899 and I have been building the ultimate mod list and intend to play through the entire game, eventually.
<br /><br />I tend to start a new game, create the ultimate face, head to Riverwood, see a cool location and dive back into the Creation Kit with a new idea. It’s very difficult for me to play the game without my creativity drawing me back out and into the Creation Kit. If I had a bucket list, completing Skyrim would certainly be on there.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Which mod authors do you take inspiration from?[/b]
<br /><br />As I’m sure many have, I’ve always admired the work of [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/187943]Chesko[/url]. His understanding of not only the technical aspect of modding but how to best implement features so that they feel like part of the base game is incredible. More recently, the main focus of my projects is to aim for the same standards of implementation and try to introduce features into the game in a very clean way.
<br /><br />Additionally, I would have to shout out Elianora once more as I always find myself looking over screenshots of her mods to figure out how I should lay out some of my clutter in my own mods. Her creativity and ability to clutter interiors is the reason I reached out to her to create Mörskom Estate.I’m sure there are a few other mod authors too which have inspired me in the past and my community Discord always has some amazing posts from the community of their mod creations which always fuels the fire to create.
<br /><br /><br />[b]How can fans of your work best support your modding efforts?
<br />[/b]
<br />When I started modding I never thought that I would get a following of any kind and it was never a target to do so. However, the more people that started to watch my content and leave me kind comments, the better my creations became. It takes time and resources to create new content, share the development process and provide adequate documentation for my mods and videos, so it’s always appreciated when people are able to help support my work through sites like Patreon.
<br /><br />Of course, I wouldn’t still be sat here if it wasn’t for people just tuning into my live streams, giving me friendly moral support and chatting away on my community [url=https://discord.gg/4WD7RCD]Discord server[/url]. A little coin always greases the wheels, but just joining in with the community and continuing to share content is the best way to support me and other mod authors.
<br /><br /><br />[b]Is there anything else you’d like to say to the Nexus Mods Community?[/b]
<br /><br />I would like to give my thanks to all those who download my mods, give me valuable feedback and even report bugs. It’s a nice feeling knowing that people enjoy your creations and it makes it all the more worth creating mods for Skyrim.
<br /><br />Additionally, I would like to commend the Nexus staff for maintaining such an awesome site for modders across the globe and continuing to push the site and the community to new levels.
<br /><br /><br />[b]What are your plans for the future?
<br /><br />[/b]For the past 6 months, I’ve been working on a new mod called A Cat’s Life which aims to bring cats into the land of Skyrim. It’s been a great project and it’s already approaching completion. The mod will include features such as cat feeding, a needs system, cat beds, collars and much more.
<br /><br />[center][img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544018897-316502669.jpeg[/img] [img width=500,height=281]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/2295/images/26/26-1544018932-1361113544.jpeg[/img][/center]
<br /><br />Caranthir Tower may also have something in the pipeline but depending on how ACL does after release and how I feel in a few months time, it may or may not happen. I do want to continue to mod Skyrim and I’m looking forward to the day when the next Elder Scrolls game rolls out the door. Maybe this time I can actually play the entire game before the Creation Kit releases and pulls me away from playing.
<br /><br />[line]
<br />A big thank you to DarkFox127 for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597][b]BigBizkit[/b][/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975][b]Pickysaurus[/b][/url]. Today’s guest is DarkFox127, known for his YouTube series on the Creation Kit and as the man behind Caranthir Tower Reborn and Riverside Shack - Buildable Player Home.
Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. For those in the community who don’t know you, could you tell us a little about yourself?
My name’s Richard aka Darkfox127 and I’ve been creating mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim since its release back in 2011. Shortly after spending some time in the Creation Kit and grasping the basics, I took to creating tutorial videos on YouTube which got me a reputation in the modding community. Many people now describe me as the “go to guy” for learning how to use the Creation Kit, although I’m far from an expert.
In addition to my tutorial videos, I’ve released a variety of mods (mostly player homes) which have been successful over the years including Caranthir Tower, Mörskom Estate, Riverside Shack and more. I’m also a strong believer in sharing resources whenever possible and working with others to make great content. I continue working on projects to this day and regularly stream the development process on both Twitch and YouTube.
How did you first get into modding games?
Believe it or not, my first taste of content creation for video games was many years ago back in the days of Timesplitters 2. It was in a way modding, at least for the limitations of games consoles. I would create new multiplayer maps to play with friends or against bots. I even utilized the mission creation tools using triggered events and wrote my own little stories. I was in fact a console gamer for the better part of 20 years before coming across to the PC just prior to the release of Skyrim.
Other games I began to experiment with included the Far Cry series which had an amazing in-game map editor, again on the console. I would spend hours making multiplayer maps and uploading them online in the hopes that others would join me in playing them. I did on occasion build a large lobby of people to face off against each other which was great fun.
It would be accurate to say that I’ve always had an itch for creating things, even if it was on an old console with limited functionality. This eventually led to me purchasing my first PC which barely had enough power to load the web browser until I eventually saved up the money and bought a gaming rig, along with a copy of Skyrim.
I had barely left Riverwood when I discovered that there were professional-level developer tools available for the game which would allow me to take my creativity to a whole new level and scratch that itch once again. The downside is that due to spending thousands of hours in the Creation Kit, I have still to this day not finished the base game.
Your two most popular mods are Caranthir Tower Reborn and Morskom Estate. The latter of which is a collaboration with Elianora. What was it like working on a project alongside one of the best house mod makers for Skyrim?
I honestly very rarely work alongside other mod authors, despite having done a couple of projects in the past with one or two. When I started chatting with Elianoraworld space and checked out her mods, I realised that we each had the perfect ingredients to create something which was truly unique, if not a little too crazy.
At first, I thought that it might be a little chaotic sending files back and forth, but it ended up being fairly straightforward. We spoke almost every day and dropped ideas back and forth constantly. Eli’s ability to create amazing interiors and my knack for scripting and general implementation worked well.
She’s a super friendly person with some great talent and we both helped support each other throughout the development of the mod and we just gelled well. It was a pleasure to work on something which became so popular with a large number of people.
Which parts of the mod did you each create?
After we both sat down and talked about having a winter home with all these cool immersive features, Elianora ran off and created the base structure out of nowhere. When she sent it back to me, my mind went insane and we both started springing more ideas up to the surface. From that point on, Elianora would go on to clutter the house and I worked on adding all the scripting madness into the mod. We passed the mod back and forth over time and eventually, we had a finished house mod.
It contained all the cluttering goodness of an Elianora home and all the insane features typical of my own house mods. I took on the additional roles of publishing the mod and writing the full walkthrough guide. We both took the time to test out the mod on our own systems and Elianora used her PC for doing the screenshots, given that she always picked out the best ENBs and her game always looks amazing. Although in the end the mod ideally required a mid-range to high-end PC to prevent all the crashes as we hit the limits of the Creation Kit’s capabilities to the point we can’t even mod it anymore, it turned out to be a successful mod regardless and I think I we are both proud of Mörskom Estate.
Caranthir Tower Reborn is a huge player home and quest mod. Can you describe your process for designing and building this mod?
I’ve been asked this on stream before and it’s actually a tough one. Although I consider myself a very organised person, I never really have much of a plan when it comes to developing a mod. I get an idea, I dump some items in the render window and I see what comes of it. That’s oddly enough the way most of my projects start. Some may not be aware of this, but Caranthir Tower was originally going to be called Asires’s Tower. It started out as a square room filled with junk and a teleport which led to a random world space covered in ice. None of the story really existed and there was no logic to anything I was building. Since the very beginning though, I had this vision of a tower high up in the mountains. When I eventually made the decision to pick the project back up, I renamed it Caranthir Tower after a quick name generator search on Google. I know, not what people would expect but that’s how the name came about. I then started messing around with the largest tileset I could find because large obviously translates into epic.
VRTJltc9h1c
After many months, I had created a cool wizards tower high up in the mountains and people loved it. It was my first hit in the modding community which I’m extremely proud of, but then came the long road of taking what I had built and slowly turning it into something bigger, better and more ambitious. I decided to take the mod and recreate it from scratch. It eventually came to be known as Caranthir Tower Reborn and this time around it was bigger, better thought out and I pretty much just came up with ideas as I went. Eventually though, I finally stopped adding new features and released the mod.
With all that said, my development process for my mods has improved dramatically over the years. Although I still start with some basic ideas and roll with whatever I have, I take the time to plan out more. Each one of my projects now has a Trello board filled with ideas, not only from myself but from friends and other members of the community. I make sure that everything in the mod has its place and makes sense within the lore. When it comes down to which section to work on and when I find it is best to bounce around different aspects of development to keep things fresh. Sitting there and scripting thousands of lines of Papyrus really can get a little dull after a while, as can Navmeshing entire sections of a mod. So jumping around different tasks really helps to keep things interesting and prevents burnout.
How long did it take to complete?
A wizard’s work is never complete. Just kidding, although there is some truth to that regarding Caranthir Tower right now. The mod must have taken me the better part of three years on and off. There would be spells where I would be working on other projects or taking a break from modding. To this day, I still have ideas and plans for Caranthir Tower and I’ll continue to work on some of my larger projects for as long as they are fun to mod.
Are there any features you’re especially proud of?
I think the biggest feature and the most tricky to have managed a workaround for was the rising of the tower itself. It turns out that the Creation Engine doesn’t like moving objects via scripting if there are too large. It took me four hours to figure out why my tower wouldn’t move and I eventually came up with a workaround by setting the scale down and changing it midway through the translation of the mesh. I wasn’t going to let the Creation Kit beat me on this one.
-Jh-aVlCfuI
Another feature which required a bit of workaround was the portal system for the tower. Getting the player to activate a teleport and select from a number of locations was easy but how would an NPC know how to navigate a message box? The answer is that they can’t. My solution was to place just out of reach doors behind the walls of the tower which NPCs can use to access every section of the structure. If you load up CTR in the CK, you can see the crazy link of portals throughout the cells that the NPCs will use the get around. Fun fact, they all go through the Lobby to get to their destination.
You devote a lot of time to creating video tutorials for Creation Kit on your YouTube channel. What inspired you to share your knowledge this way?
As mentioned briefly earlier, I’m a strong believer in sharing knowledge and resources within the community. I started out with the Creation Kit watching the official Bethesda tutorials and eventually seeing some videos from other YouTubers like BestInSlot. When I continued to tear apart everything in the Creation Kit to see how things worked and began experimenting myself, I felt that as good as some of the tutorials out there were, I could fill in some of the blanks and offer further advice from my own experiences. I grabbed my old Xbox Original headset which was falling apart and found some free software to start recording my desktop.
u5EmFVRRAzk
I started low down the YouTube food chain, but at least I wasn’t using notepad to explain how to do things. Before I knew it, I had a following of people all watching my tutorials and I just kept sharing what I would learn. I think I’ve always enjoyed helping others out and explaining how to do things in as simple a way possible, so YouTube and the Creation Kit let me scratch another itch.
What are your opinions on the Creation Kit?
As much as I may have joked and slandered elements of the Creation Kit before, at the end of the day, it’s an amazing tool which gives us access to the amazing worlds that Bethesda create and allows us to create our own stories within the game. Sure the tool has its downfalls and limitations, especially when you take a look at some of the more modern tools available for video game development, but this allows you to tap directly into Bethesda games which is something few developers give you so much control over.
If you’re willing to take the time to learn how to use the Creation Kit, it opens up an entirely new realm of possibilities to explore and working with the CK has given me some transferable skills I’ve been able to take with me in a professional working environment.
How do you see the current state of modding?
With the release of Skyrim Special Edition and the VR experience, modding for Skyrim has bounced back a little. Now that people are able to convert the majority of mods from legacy across to SE, they can take full advantage of the slightly more up to date graphics and the 64-bit engine. There are still a good amount of people out there modding the game and downloading the new content which continues to be released by modders on a daily basis. Skyrim modding has certainly had stronger days but even the older Elder Scrolls titles are still seeing amazing mod releases and people are still playing those games. They’ve held on for many years and so will Skyrim.
I feel that Fallout 4 modding has kicked off in a big way too, although I myself was never drawn into the latest title of the series (not counting Fallout 76). Fallout 4 has seen a lot of modders move on from Skyrim which is to be expected but the modding community will always remain strong for The Elder Scrolls franchise. I also don’t believe that the introduction of the Creation Club will have any impact on modding of Bethesda games as they know the importance of mods and they highly value their community. I think for as long as they have the capability, Bethesda will always make room for people to make their own additions to the game through the use of the Creation Kit.
You’ve dabbled in modding Fallout games with Combustible Oil Lamps. Are you planning to create more content for the Fallout series?
Creating the Combustible Oil Lamps mod was a short and fun project, however, the game never really pulled me in the same way that previous Fallout games did back during my console years. I may one day give Fallout 4 another shot (pun intended) and see where the experience takes me. I don’t have any immediate plans to mod the game, but it’s not off the table.
What do you think of Fallout 76 and would you be interested in modding it?
Fallout 76 looks to be a very different experience from what fans of the series have come to expect. I’ve never been very big on MMOs as I’ve never got the time to grind my way through those types of game, as a result, they don’t tend to hold my interest. It’s unlikely that I would grab a copy of Fallout 76, especially given the recent controversy surrounding it.
Do you still play the games you make mods for?
Does diving into the game through the console and testing count? As mentioned previously, I never actually completed Skyrim. I did get through the main story and The College of Winterhold, along with the Dawnguard DLC but I still have not played the Dragonborn DLC. To my defence though, simsim899 and I have been building the ultimate mod list and intend to play through the entire game, eventually.
I tend to start a new game, create the ultimate face, head to Riverwood, see a cool location and dive back into the Creation Kit with a new idea. It’s very difficult for me to play the game without my creativity drawing me back out and into the Creation Kit. If I had a bucket list, completing Skyrim would certainly be on there.
Which mod authors do you take inspiration from?
As I’m sure many have, I’ve always admired the work of Chesko. His understanding of not only the technical aspect of modding but how to best implement features so that they feel like part of the base game is incredible. More recently, the main focus of my projects is to aim for the same standards of implementation and try to introduce features into the game in a very clean way.
Additionally, I would have to shout out Elianora once more as I always find myself looking over screenshots of her mods to figure out how I should lay out some of my clutter in my own mods. Her creativity and ability to clutter interiors is the reason I reached out to her to create Mörskom Estate.I’m sure there are a few other mod authors too which have inspired me in the past and my community Discord always has some amazing posts from the community of their mod creations which always fuels the fire to create.
How can fans of your work best support your modding efforts?
When I started modding I never thought that I would get a following of any kind and it was never a target to do so. However, the more people that started to watch my content and leave me kind comments, the better my creations became. It takes time and resources to create new content, share the development process and provide adequate documentation for my mods and videos, so it’s always appreciated when people are able to help support my work through sites like Patreon.
Of course, I wouldn’t still be sat here if it wasn’t for people just tuning into my live streams, giving me friendly moral support and chatting away on my community Discord server. A little coin always greases the wheels, but just joining in with the community and continuing to share content is the best way to support me and other mod authors.
Is there anything else you’d like to say to the Nexus Mods Community?
I would like to give my thanks to all those who download my mods, give me valuable feedback and even report bugs. It’s a nice feeling knowing that people enjoy your creations and it makes it all the more worth creating mods for Skyrim.
Additionally, I would like to commend the Nexus staff for maintaining such an awesome site for modders across the globe and continuing to push the site and the community to new levels.
What are your plans for the future?
For the past 6 months, I’ve been working on a new mod called A Cat’s Life which aims to bring cats into the land of Skyrim. It’s been a great project and it’s already approaching completion. The mod will include features such as cat feeding, a needs system, cat beds, collars and much more.
Caranthir Tower may also have something in the pipeline but depending on how ACL does after release and how I feel in a few months time, it may or may not happen. I do want to continue to mod Skyrim and I’m looking forward to the day when the next Elder Scrolls game rolls out the door. Maybe this time I can actually play the entire game before the Creation Kit releases and pulls me away from playing.
A big thank you to DarkFox127 for answering our questions. If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to BigBizkit or Pickysaurus. Fri, 07 Dec 2018 08:57:37 +0000InterviewsPickysaurushttps://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/13856
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/news/1385628